Moving and settling

So, the big move. It was all rather quick and we’ve only just caught our breaths now. It was less than two weeks of being offered the place to us getting the keys, and we started to move straight away. The Friday that we collected the keys, we did four or five runs with Kat’s car of the little bits – things I could carry up the (three flights of) stairs and that we didn’t trust removalists with. My legs held out and we were fairly successful. As we started to move stuff in though, we began to panic that all of our stuff wouldn’t fit. This was to be proven wrong the next day.

On the Saturday, we did a couple of runs (with extra hands of course) in the morning before the removalists came. Once they turned up, it was around an hour to pack up the truck, with all of us helping carry stuff out to the truck. I was predicting up at an hour per flight of stairs at the other end, but it was done much quicker than that. The plan to get removalists was a good one, as it would have taken hours (and days) for Kat’s back and my knees to get everything up here!

As it turns out, once there was furniture around and beds were set up, the rooms seemed biggeer. It was clear from the start that we were downsizing, but not by as much as we though. Everything fits, and we’re only clearing out stuff so that we can buy more (mostly in the form of books!)

I’m quite content at this new place. I’ve quickly adjusted to taking the train to work, but thankfully it’s never too busy (standing on the way in, but always get a seat coming home) and I had paid for monthly tickets at times when I was temping at the old place, so the cost wasn’t a shock. As the last boxes are being unpacked (or we permanently position them in corners of rooms), the place is feeling much more like home. However, if (and that’s a big if), we move again, the furniture is all staying up here. I’ll buy new stuff for the next place!!

On top of this havoc, my parents arrived in the country on the 30th. They’re here for a month, but only had 3 nights in Melbourne initially before going over to Adelaide by car. It’s certainly good to see them again, but it’s strange seeing familiar faces in place that I’ve never seen them. We caught up for dinner the three nights they were here, and will do so again at the other end of the trip when they come back before they fly out.

Other than that, it’s just been a matter of settling in and trying to get on with things. I’ve been knitting quite avidly for the last few months – first for my friend Kayleigh, then for my colleague who has just left on maternity leave, and now another friend has announced his wife is expecting, so I’m planning the next thing. On the wonderful Ravelry, I found a pattern for very easy booties, and I’ve done three pairs of these with leftover yarn which would otherwise be passed onto the Salvos or hoarded until I come up with a better plan. I’ve done a pair in under two hours, so it’s a relatively quick pattern (for my speed of knitting), and they’re easily done on straight needles. However, after two relatively plain baby jumpers, I’m about to branch out a little. More details as they’re decided!

Post teens

As some of you may or may not know, the Tuesday just past was my 20th birthday. This marks the end of my teenage years and perhaps the start of my growing up. Or not. I spent my birthday at the zoo, playing with my new camera (a Canon EOS 40D).

Before I turned 20, I didn’t want to leave my teens. Now I realise that I’ll probably be taken a little more seriously when people ask my age, and well, not much else will change.

Moving onto my new camera though. The 40D is on it’s way out, with the newer 50D more widely available, most shops have sold out of their 40Ds. Thankfully Camera Lane still had one left, and being new and cheaper than Ebay, was definitely a good buy. All of the batteries, memory cards and lenses from my 10D can change straight over.

The 10D has been giving me problems for a few months now, it’s most common problem being ‘crashing’ or resetting itself just after taking a photo. Besides that, it’s achingly slow and has a fairly low image quality compared with what’s available now. The 40D however, while not being the latest model (although is very similar to the 50D), is much quicker, the buttons are more efficient and the quality is higher.

I took it to Melbourne Zoo on Tuesday, along with my zoom lens (28-200mm), to give it a try. I’m very impressed with the quality, and the ISO can be taken up to 800 without crippling noise. I’m quite delighted with my purchase, and the zoo was fantastic fun.

My friend also bought me an adaptor so that I can use one of his many lenses, and I took his 50mm f/1.2 with me to the zoo for use in the butterfly house, and despite the fogging issues, it worked a treat.

Other than that, my birthday was fairly uneventful. On the Saturday before, my friends and I went for dinner at Cafe Umago on Brunswick Street, before going out for some drinks.

On the Saturday morning Kat and I had been looking at rental properties, as we’re looking to move out together to a smaller place. We saw three places, and all were reasonable so we applied them. On the Monday afternoon, I received a phonecall offering us the ‘best’ of the three, an apartment in Brunswick! This is fantastic news, as it means that we don’t have to keep dragging ourselves out of bed on a Saturday morning and look at places. Unfortunately it also means that we have to pack up everything.

I’m a pretty compulsive person, and I love organising things. The mammoth task of starting to pack is a huge hump to overcome though, and I needed an entire Saturday to make a decent dent in it. I’m easily distracted by things such as ordering my books, negatives, folding clothes neatly and looking at each and every item as I pack it, so it took a while but I managed to pack up the majority of the things I won’t need between now and Friday/Saturday! I can almost guarantee my laptop will be the last thing to get packed.

Buzzing like a busy bee

As I’m currently looking for a new place, I’ve been trying to divide my time between doing that, work and taking/processing/editing photos. It’s a hard juggle!

So far no luck on the house-front, but am about to start looking with fellow housemate Kat for a two-bedroom place. It’s unlikely we’ll stay in East Melbourne, but we’ll hopefully stay in the inner suburbs as neither of us want too far to travel to work.

I rarely update about work, and that’s because I suppose there is little to update about. It’s the daily grind, which is rewarding and interesting enough to get me back there each day. As a colleague is leaving on maternity leave in a few months’ time, I will be taking over most of her work until we find a replacement. Although I’m not looking forward to the drastically increased workload, there are a few new skills and tasks to learn which should be interesting.

Photography, on the other hand, is getting interesting. I’ve just shot, processed and am now scanning my first ever roll of 120 film. I borrowed a friend’s Kershaw folding camera and shot a roll of Neopan 400, and processed in the DD-X I have at the moment. It’s come out relatively well, and despite high potential for light-leaks when it was taken out of the camera (it wound loosely), all was fine. Uploads to come.

Leading on from that, I used a small part of ‘Kev’s cash bonus’ (the $900 economic stimulus plan) to purchase my own medium format camera, a Dacora, which is also a folder. I only received it today, but with more manual settings I’m hoping to get some better results with it!

Since I’ve gotten into the swing of processing my own film, I’ve found myself to be shooting a lot more black and white just for the convenience of it. I have been quite ’snap happy’ with it, but I’m starting to settle and get more quality too.

Recently I also bought a 50mm f/1.8 lens for my 10D. I’ve only shot with it once, and apart from minor focusing issues, it’s a good buy (it was dirt cheap) and I’m glad to own my first (hopefully of many) prime.

This was from the shoot with the new 50mm. The video of Little Boris, created by the North Melbourne FC, provided great amusement for those of us who weren’t shocked and disgusted. Finding a rubber chicken in the following weeks was slightly difficult, but thankfully we managed and had a good shoot.

A toy panorama camera up the Rialto, with a roll of (ick) Tmax, is surely the best way to shoot cityscapes? I thought so at least.