Green Bamboo in Resin
I went a little bit nuts on the Etsy Bushfire Appeal shop last week and bought three necklaces. Me? Necklaces? I KNOW! Insanity. Anyway, the first two arrived last night so I’m working the bling today.

The first photo is me out in the park at lunch today; the second one is from the original seller. The necklace is “Green Bamboo in Resin” from Cherbie’s Creations. It’s Japanese paper in a pendant with resin on top, along with a tiny pearl and some crystals. Pretty, huh? I didn’t even realize until Snookums pointed it out this morning that the design on the paper makes a “K”. Nice!

Okay, I just read this NYT article about the efficacy of using wagers and competition to promote weight loss. Hmmm. I know that doing the Nike+ challenges against some of you motivated me to run farther. Maybe it would also work to drop some weight? I found this site Fatbet.net that hosts weight loss challenges. Each person gets to nominate the amount they want to lose in the time frame, so you can participate even if you don’t have a lot to drop. We could also nominate an actual wager that would provide incentive. I’m thinking actual cash that the winner would put towards a new wardrobe. Thoughts? Anybody interested?

ARGH. I’ve been having stress about our house for the past week. (See? This is why I wanted to keep renting.) One of the neighbours stopped by last week to let us know about an exterminator that was going to be working, and then casually asked if we had any plans on paying our outstanding strata fees. Uh, what? Frantic inspection of the filing cabinet revealed that we have not received a single mailing from the strata management company for a full YEAR. No bills, no AGM notice, nothing. We’ve spent the last week trying to get anyone there to actually send us an invoice so we can pay it. We finally had to get the Head of the Body Corporate (and her paralegal) involved to get things moving. It turns out they’ve had our address wrong this entire time! GAH. So yeah, we’re getting it straightened out, but now I feel paranoid that all the other owners think we’re deadbeats. I’m going to have to bake them all cookies or something.