Well, it's Friday and I'm feeling a bit better about life in general!

There are lots of good things that I have to be happy about:

1. I love Adelaide.  It's an awesome city.  The climate is agreeable and we can drive to the beach in 10 minutes.  The beach is gorgeous and I've spent a couple of days over the last few weeks lying on the sand and reading, just because I can.

2. Jeremy has a job - very important!!  One of us DEFINITELY needs to have a job, although obviously ideally we both would (and will, eventually!)  He got paid today - thankfully since we were literally down to our last $10 - and WOW...let's just say, he put in a lot of overtime and this was reflected in his pay cheque!  Not to mention, Education Queensland deposited about $450 in my account randomly, which was a nice surprise.  I'm quite certain it was my outstanding kilometric allowance which they processed after school holidays.

3. So many amazing people in my life.  In Canada, Brisbane, and now in Adelaide.  Last night we hosted dinner at our place.  I made lamb burgers, and they were damn good!  Friends brought salad and ice cream, and wine.  We have been making this a weekly thing, at various locations.  Tomorrow we have a housewarming party, which I'm looking forward to.  Life is fun when you have good people around!

4. I bought ice skates today!!  $70 for skates which look basically brand new.  They fit perfectly.  good old Gumtree.  The lady I bought them from was really nice.  I tried them on in her living room and we chatted for about 15 minutes.  I also have an ice skating date tonight with my new friend Claire.  She's the one I'm looking into joining a hockey team with.

5. With all the free time I have, I've been doing some semi-productive things.  I am now volunteering with Leveda, an organization that supports adults with disabilities.  They are super excited to have me volunteering, and I'll get to use some speech pathology knowledge to help them.  I have basically been reading books at a pace of one a day.  The library is my second home.  I've discovered some new great authors.  I spend a lot of time at the gym.  Yesterday I must have done far too many squats and lunges because today my lower half is in quite a bit of pain!!  I hope I manage alright on my skating date :)

6. Roles have flipped from Jeremy being the main 'chef' in our house to me doing the majority of the cooking.  When I have time, I've found that I actually quite enjoy it.  I have been cooking healthy meals with lots of veggies, but they have been tasty too, if I do say so myself.  Some of the things include: lemon chicken (with a sauce made from lemons off the tree in our yard...we have a LEMON TREE!!), ginger beef stirfry, chopped italian salad, tomato mozzarella prosciutto salad...I'm having fun :)

7. Everything is going really well with J and I.  Besides the sometimes stress about money, the last 8 months or so we've just been extra happy with each other and having a great time.  We enjoy each other's company and just like hanging out.  We've been going for walks (Wednesday night trivia is 9 kms round trip), hikes on the weekends, and exploring our new area.  He's my best friend and I feel pretty lucky.

Not so happy things

1. Continuing lack of job

So - as you can see, the good far outweighs the bad and I just need to remember that.  Here are some pictures of last weekend's hike.  We drove about half an hour to Hallett Cove, which is apparently "one of the best known geological sites in Australia and is known for its international significance. The area has been declared a Geological Monument by the Geological Society of Australia and placed on the South Australian Heritage Register for its for educational and scientific significance.

We didn't see any snakes, luckily!

This is called "The Sugarloaf".  Here's some stuff about it: The Sugarloaf is an iconic part of Hallett Cove. It is a treasured historical symbol of the 51 hectare Conservation Park. The name is not due to any scientific reason, more of an observational name as the Sugarloaf is only named as such because “it looks like someone has poured a pile of sugar.”  This formation is due to erosion by rain and wind over thousands of years. Around 280 million years ago Hallett Cove (and South Australia) was covered as an ice cap. The ice cap melted around 10 million years later and left this spectacular sculpture -The Sugar Loaf.

A good view of the 'Amphitheatre' and the walking path.  Such an interesting landscape!

I really enjoyed our little hike.  This weekend we are going to check out a waterfall walk in one of the national parks.  I downloaded a PDF of 40 Great Short South Australian Walks so we're ticking them off the list as we go.  They range from 45 minutes to 5 hours, so there are lots of options depending on how we're feeling.  Our trip to Tasmania gave us a bit of a hiking bug, so we're building up to doing some sort of long hiking trip over a few days.

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend :)