Way back in March, the five questions meme was going around. These are from magfish. Better late than never, right?

1. Have you learned anything about yourself from your recent in-between-homes travels?

I learnt that I love travelling in an RV, at least in a country that is geared up for it. I learnt that I was more of a tidy freak than I thought I was, since not being able to find stuff when I want it is even more annoying than putting it back in the right place in the first place. This did diminish as time went on however. I learnt that you can do too much touristing, and that's it's ok to spend a night in a city that never sleeps playing cards in your hotel room. And I learnt that I appear to like hiking, at least when it's in stunning surroundings.

2. Cheese or wine?

Wine! I don't actually like cheese that much. Melted on other food, yes, infused with a whole garlic field, yes, but sitting alone on a platter with naught but some dry biscuits to keep it company? No thanks.

3. Do you look back now and wonder how on earth Peta-from-the-past was (initially) so resistent to the idea of the "quiet geek"?

Not really, I know why I was resistant. I analysed the changes in my feelings plenty at the time, and I haven't had reason to change my theories. I clearly had bad character judgement, but I was quite happily single at the time. In many ways the lack of internal pressure to make this relationship work, because I wasn't expecting it to go anywhere, meant that we were better able to communicate very honestly with each other right off the bat, and air our differences to each other, and thus work through them and find our compromise points. And it was through this communication that Will showed me many of his characteristics that I still love him for to this day: that he genuinely listens, that he really understands and "gets" me, that he adapts where it's sensible and challenges me where it's not, that we can meet happily in the middle. The quiet geek had hidden depths!

4. Skiing or sunlounging in a bikini? (I think I already know the answer!)

Can I have a good book and some beautiful views while sunlounging? Because then I'll take that. Otherwise, skiing, as just sitting in a chair for hours, even a lovely warm chair, isn't that exciting.

5. What has surprised you most about moving back to Australia?

Just how much I'm absolutely loving it. There was a lot I was afraid of, and there's substance for those fears (eg casual racism, check), but the almost daily dose of sunlight, the feeling of space and freedom, the job that doesn't have me feeling like I need to work 50+ hours a week and stress over it 168 hours a week, being able to easily spend time with my family, Will's happy and adjusting far better than I could ever have dreamed... it's just ace. I can't tell you how fortunate I feel. Not everything is perfect of course and there's some things I have a stress about from time to time, but overall I'm so much happier and content with myself than I was in London. Everyone should move to Australia.

Da da da da da dum

And... found that life felt pretty fucking awesome. It was 07:05, the light was tinted purple and green through these old windows, and I'd slept so well on this new bed, with a lovely dream that ended with a kiss. I was alone, I must have slept through Will's alarm and he'd snuck out of bed to his shower without disturbing me. My brain started to register the sounds of morning, the cars and lawnmowers mixed with caws and chirps and whistles of so many birds. This is a world away from our life in London, and it's all coming together, and it feels great. Really great. Will returned, hugged me good morning, and I got up to share breakfast with him. How lucky am I.

I'd forgotten that it's near impossible to find furnished rentals in Australia. So along with the finding a job and somewhere to live, also comes buying all the usual stuff for a house, ALL AT ONCE. Poor ole bank balance. Still, there are a lot of charity furniture places around here that we'll be raiding real soon now.

Things we have so far:

house

bed

fridge/freezer

vacuum cleaner

BBQ

outdoor table for two

steamer

kettle

Australian mobile numbers

Things we don't have:

jobs

car

washing machine

aircon

lawnmower

umbrellas

every other bit of furniture and household electricals

friends

So, UK and US peeps, I've ventured into 2012 for y'all, and so far it's pretty fucking good. For example, now we're back after the fireworks, it looks quite a lot like this...

Wally

Yes I have a dog on my feet. He's a cute dog though, so he gets away with it.

Happy New Year!

I wasn't going to post a Christmas post, although it's nice to use the word "Christmas" without LJ concatenating my post into every single other bloody person's, but then last night we had Christmas Eve guests that I thought a few people here might appreciate. We're bound to get more tonight too, and every night through summer.



Fruitbats!




With or without bats, I hope those in tough times find peace, and we all get some joy and fun and frolics in our day.

Will and I put up mum's tree tonight. All our presents are bought and wrapped. My brother-in-law has sent me a poinsettia for Christmas, which is now centrepiece of the table. I'm sitting outside on the deck in 20-something heat (mild, not melting) with the wind rustling the palm leaves and geckos squeaking in the eaves above me. I stink of insect repellent (my mozzie bites have mozzie bites) and there's a glass of very nice Margaret River cab sav to my left. I think this'll be a good Christmas.

Our travelling time is nearly up. Tomorrow we fly to Brisbane, and back to a world where we have to think about things like jobs and housing. Which is kinda good since it turns out that the extra money that used to appear in my bank account on a monthly basis doesn't just happen by magic. However despite nearly three months of ruminating, I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up, which makes finding a provider of more magic monthly money a bit awkward.

We're in Florida now, Sanibel Island on the Gulf of Mexico to be exact, and it's a balmy 20 degrees outside. This place has the shelliest beach I've ever seen, and huge dark pelicans. So far my time here has been weddingweddingwedding - not mine, but I am a bridesmaid - but the wedding went off perfectly yesterday, so I'm going to go walk the shelly beach and watch the diving pelicans and see if I can keep the real world at bay for one more day.

I'm looking out the window at the craziest looking town I've ever been in. Las Vegas. Faux New York, faux Venice, faux Paris, faux Rome, really faux pyramid - why do Americans travel when they can just come here, and it's all a hell of a lot cleaner too!

Driving the RV across crazy high mountains, through icy snow and glaring sun, has been heaps of fun. It's mostly been cold, really cold (-11) some nights, it's always been cramped, but to look out your window at twisted juniper trees, deep red rocks, and cobalt blue skies makes a great change from the usual bricks and mortar of your average hotel room. And unlike the poor buggers in tents, we had heating and enough space to play gin rummy while sitting comfortably with our feet up.

A few nights ago, my laptop, where I'd been dumping all my photos - as you may know or remember, I like to take a couple of photos a day when travelling - complained of an imminently failing hard drive. Joy. I've mostly ignored it until now, but this morning's exploration of Las Vegas has been limited to staring out the window while I save and copy and chkdsk and research how to get a Dell laptop harddrive fixed when one can no longer just ring one's friendly Dell account manager. The view is from the 41st floor so it's not entirely bad.

We saw Cirque du Soleil's Mystère last night. Stunning displays of physicality and grace as always from Cirque (oh my, really quite something in some cases), but I feel the only "mystère" was wtf was with the giant multi-coloured snail with a human face. Stuff of nightmares, that thing.

Chkdsk is taking forever. I suspect it'll die or fail or bluescreen the minute I leave it alone just like everything else I've left for the laptop to complete, but it's time to escape the hotel room. Will has a rollercoaster he needs to visit, and I need to walk off some of 3 huge meals a day I've been consuming.

Inside a warm RV, tired from a crazy hike today where we walked up 21 switchbacks then climbed our way across a ridge to the top of Angel's Landing (Zion National Park), full of chicken and excellent chips, glass of Sonoma Valley pinot noir. Life being unemployed and homeless is pretty darn good.

Utah is totally where it's at if you're into outstanding scenery and all the beautiful nature you can soak up. It's less good if you like any booze more than 4%. We struck gold with a great little brewery in Moab, but it's been dry since then. Least it would be if we hadn't stocked up.

Although, Utah is DRY. As was Colorado. I'm literally dehydrating as I sit here; my hair, nails, and skin will have withered away with a few more days of this, I'm sure.

We've driven from Denver, the mile-high city (joining the mile-high club here is cheating, I'm sure), over the snowy Rockies via the most scenic (and switchback-crazy) road, to Mesa Verde (National Park 1), then onto Moab and The Arches (NP2), short walk in Cayonlands (NP3) and Dead Horse State Park (GREAT views over NP2), then down through Capitol Reef (NP3, and a whole load of deer. The deer game is getting silly. We saw so many dead deer by the side of the road we had to start counting them as 5 points, and in the parks real deer can easily net you over 100), onward to Bryce (NP4 and fucking cold, ice inside our windows that morning) and finally Zion (NP5). Tomorrow we head to the Grand Canyon North Rim (NP6), then the South Rim, and finally, Las Vegas. I don't actually want to give the RV up, it's absolutely great and I could easily spend another week or more travelling further. I wish I'd had more faith in Will's idea, and in the ease of finding RV parks in this fabulous place. Not a bad lesson to learn though!

Will and I will both miss fireworks tomorrow night however. 5th Nov is one of my favourite days in the whole calendar.

Um, we're kinda sorta supposed to pick up an RV today then driving it over the Rockies! Not convinced this is ideal driving weather.

Yesterday, for comparision, looked like this:

We lifted up into the setting sun, chased it west halfway around the world, and left it in the air over Denver. The sun sunk with a fiery farewell, blackening the rugged profile of the Rockies. Then we landed into a huge grid of lights and blinked our way sleepily through the queues and questions in the bright glare of the terminal.

Today is day one of an itinerary that looks like a toddler scribbled on a map of the USA. The sun is shining, the weather forecast looks frightening (snow tomorrow, high of 2 and low of -5!) and my body, having had what it thinks is dinner, now wants to go to bed again.

It's been a long month, packing up my life in the UK and saying farewell (not goodbye) to the people who've made the last 12 years such a great adventure. I'm living out of a suitcase (and several bags) for the next two months and already it's annoying me. Small price in the grand scheme of this thing, this big experience.

Time to get out and about before this pillow beside me gets just too tempting!

All packed now to live out of a suitcase for 2 months, in expected weather conditions from snow in New York to beach wedding in Florida. Will has literally packed all his clothes, aside from most of his exercise kit, into his suitcase, whereas I still have enough to go into several vacuum bags that need to be shipped. Do I have too many clothes?

Today the removalists come to pack up my and Will's life in London, and ship it to sunny Brisbane. All a bit daunting! We've gotten rid of bags and boxes and complete piles of stuff, in an effort to save ourselves space and money (the removalists charge by volume) but there still seems to be stuff everywhere.

Argh, shippers are here and very early! Queue all the panic!

The warm sun pouring in the windows just makes me want to curl up on the couch and snooze. The piles of Stuff I'm currently surrounded by are demanding to be dealt with instead. Now I'm an unemployed bum I should be out enjoying the last of the glorious sunshine, but UK time is running out and a day in the sunshine could cost us a lot of money if we end up shipping piles of crap.

I had lovely weekend in the sunshine in Brighton however. It's great of Britain to pull out one last trick to try and convince me to stay, but I've been here 12 years and I know this weather won't last. Frost by Friday! That's more the Britain I expect.

I'd never been to Brighton before, and god how I wish I had, years ago, so I could go back repeatedly. Not for the pier - ohmygod, what do the British do to a seaside! They have all this lovely nature then build a great big ruddy amusement park and arcade halfway out into the bay. Do you know that's not normal? Anyway, the pier was a once in a lifetime experience, one too many because no way in hell am I ever going on it again, but the beach was fascinating (I could sit and look at the crazy pebbles for hours), the old pier somewhat sad, good food was easily found including THE best cinnamon icecream I've ever had, and the shopping looked like it would have been great if I wasn't in the process of emptying my flat of all but the bare necessities.

Which is kinda what I need to get back to doing. Not sleeping. Yes.

Some bloke followed me home from a work leaving do (after I kinda sorta asked him to). Now we're about to embark on our biggest adventure yet, and Will's trusting me enough to let me drag him to the other side of the world. To say I'm fortunate to have found such a loving, trusting, respectful, caring, thoughtful, considerate partner in life is an understatement of gigantic proportions. I'm counting my blessings.

This is why I read geekfeminism, although their link to a cutesy cookie post as a commemoration leaves me somewhat cold.

But I loved Star Trek as a kid. I watched reruns of the original series growing up, but like many people my age, didn't really fall in love with it until Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The streaming stars, the romance of a ship that can take you anywhere both physically and mentally, the challenges they braved, the tough calls they made. The passion and the hardships; all of these were a life LIVED, not a life plonked in front of the tv. Which of course, is where I was, dreaming I could be one of the blessed few to enter the Starfleet Academy.

I can hardly say Star Trek has inspired me to greater things, I've not leapt into unchartered territories or dived into unknown depths. But if there's one thing life on the Enterprise and life on Earth have in common, is that it's never simple or straightforward or quite how you planned it to be. But there's still so much fun.

And I still, and forever will, have a crush on Jean-Luc Picard.

Oh no, the only food I appear to have in the house is slightly stale bread, and bacon. To save myself from starvation, I am forced to embrace the only possible solution: the toasted bacon sandwich.

NOM