Today we went to the zoo. After spending a couple of hours staring at animals and wondering if the feeding times advertised on the flyer involved feeding the shrill, annoying children to the lions, we decided it was time to go home. Unfortunately we’d missed our bus and the next wasn’t for an hour. "Let’s follow the path back to the city. It goes around the lake, should be nice."

Yeah right.

For the first half hour (probably more really) we caught glimpses of the lake. For some reason that was completely inexplicable the bike/walking path doesn’t follow the lake all the time. Instead it meanders (my hated word for the day) casually over towards Black Mountain and has strange curves and loops in it that make no sense. There’s no tree, giant rock, sleeping politician to avoid and yet every so often it has a completely pointless U-shaped bend in it. For ages we saw more bikes whizzing past than water views. Eventually the path made it to the lake, but it turns out the lake was also designed with strange little bends in it. I think the man-made lake suffers from river envy or something.

We eventually made it to the city after many more meandering paths and pointless turns. You know the path was put in first and the trees that it appears to wind around put in later and when your legs are already threatening to fall off it doesn’t seem all pretty and countryish, it instead makes you want to find who designed it and strangle them with the last of your energy.

So yes, it took roughly 3 hours and many a rant from me before we dragged ourselves down to the food court in the Canberra Centre and tried to undo all that exercise with some Hungry Jacks while we waited for our bus which we had, inevitably, just missed. I crashed into bed as soon as we got home and slept until dinner. Luckily Ben likes cooking and wasn’t as tired since he usually walks around the city in his lunch breaks at speeds you usually only see when watching those funny, walking races you see in the Olympics.

I’m back in bed again and will probably only drag my carcass out of bed long enough to take off my makeup. On the plus side I do appear to be getting overall fitter in that I wasn’t out of breath for any of the walk. It seems to be just that the muscles in my legs weren’t used to quite that much exercise so that’s where all the tiredness/soreness seems to be. As I said, they’re definitely going on strike.

Just Because Flowers

Originally uploaded by purrycat.

Ben brought home these gorgeous flowers for me the other night, not to mention the vase they came in. Thank the gods! A vase is one of those things that you keep meaning to buy, but never get around to it and usually forget until suddenly you need it.

I took heaps of others, but my camera is just completely unable to cope with the shakiness of my hands so they were all blurry. This is the only one that was clear enough. I think there are new ones that will compensate for it though.

Anyway, back to the flowers. Aren’t they pretty? :) Lillies are pretty much my favourite flower, and Ben got them to put in a couple of those purple flowers which I believe are Irises. “Just Because” flowers are awesome; I’ve felt warm and fuzzy all week… which is lucky since winter is having it’s last hurrah down here.

So it seems Channel Ten has finally gotten the hint and are ditching the Australian version of Big Brother . What a relief - the ads were painful, the few times we caught some of it while channel surfing was painful, and I understand that the pain has been ongoing for several seasons now. I watched the first season and quite enjoyed the whole social experiment thing they had going on, but one episode of its second incarnation turned me right off.

Anyway, so long and farewell Big Brother. Feel free to let the door hit you on the way out!

Ack! Why did I willingly go for a walk? Don’t I have any idea how cold it is out there???

My face is frozen. Actually my face was frozen and now that I’m back inside the house I can feel it slowly defrosting. It’s the weirdest feeling to have sensation slowly coming back to your face, one little piece at a time until finally you can feel your nose again. My nose is always the last thing to defrost on account of it being stupidly pointy and long and serves it right for getting cold since it sticks out so far. Stupid nose.

Apart from the cold and the sun going away behind clouds again, it was a good walk. You can see farmland (with some very cold looking sheep) and lots of weird, deformed eucalyptus’ that are what pass for trees in Australia, and I listened to Robert Miles on my iPod since listening to all that traffic kind of breaks any peaceful feelings you might get from gazing at sheep and deformed tree dotted hills.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go stick my face in a hot drink.