12/01/10 - Oops, someones fluffed the dates much?

Mood: In a state of disbelief, shock, dismay and sadness. I can't believe everything I've been hearing and seeing on tv and radio today. These kind of disasters are always something that you watch on tv, where its happening somewhere else, and you sit there, watching it and think mindlessly... "wow, those poor people" but deep down you don't really take in the event as something 'real', nor think too hard about the impact it is having on those people (not in a cruel way, just a mindless way). It doesnt really hit home. Until you see this stuff happening to things on your own doorstep, happening to people you know, in places now overflowing with unbelievable amounts of water, places that just the weekend prior you were strolling through, fixing to catch a movie. I can't believe how quickly it's all changed. The Southbank Eye has water at it's base, from the river. The Brisbane Powerhouse is under water. There are bullsharks on the Ipswich Motorway. Um. WTF? Our beautiful city has been completely trashed. I never thought I would see the day where our beloved Brisbane City became a natural disaster zone. While I thank god that the Gold Coast and Redcliffe are yet to be affected by the floods, my heart truly does go out to those thousands upon thousands of people who have had to leave their homes, watch them go under the torrents of water, have lost everything (including loved ones), and now have to face the long haul of rebuilding their lives from scratch. I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like. And the bulk of it isn't over yet, that's the scary part. Everyone still has to wait for the water to peak. How gutwrenching. Today has been a very grim day for everyone, in spite of the sunshine we had today. At least a glimmer of positivity to help the solemn job at hand.  

Eating: Errrgh... It seems so petty to be writing crap like this at a time like this. But I need to get my brain on paper somehow. I feel so utterly helpless down here. I can't believe that within a space of 100km there can be such an extreme of circumstance. If only the rest of SE Qld could be so lucky as the Gold Coast. What a freak chance though, I can't believe we missed all of it.
Answer to question: Scotch Fillet steak for tea (medium rare of course), cheesy garlic mashed potatoes and vegies with brown onion gravy. Pretty damn good. I bought a supply of meat this afternoon after hearing one of our local Coles supermarkets was selling out of basic food stuffs. Bought some steak - well, that's already gone now - we were SUPPOSED to have lasagne, but I brought them home and there was no contest really. Lasagne can wait. Paul also had the same though this afternoon and stocked up on meat and basic food supplies too - more scotch fillet steaks, tiny teddies (the important stuff, you know??). Just in case, it so does not hurt to be prepared. Anything could happen over the next week. We just don't know.

Drinking: Did yoga tonight. So I did water.

Watching: Haven't stopped watching the constant stream of updates on the floods. Neither of us can stop watching it, it's addictive. It's the same videos playing over and over again and the reporters are saying the exact same stuff, but you can't stop watching them, it's just so unreal. It seriously is like watching a movie play before your eyes, but you know it's not. Oh how I wish it were.
I will admit that I think Anna Bligh is doing an absolute amazing job at keeping everyone banded together, updated and in control. She's seriously better than the Prime Minister at this point in my opinion, and it looks like she hasn't stopped for sleep since 3 days ago.

Listening to: Nothing worth mentioning.

Just finished: yoga and shower. Good yoga class tonight, feeling relaxed but toned. Bring on fat loss!

After this, I'm going to: bed. I wanted to watch some True Blood tonight but I wanted to blog more (watched 2 episodes last night and it ended on a real humdinger... it always does, curse it!!!)

One wish for the day:
For the floods to have never come and destroyed our beautiful city, homes and lives. While this disaster has been terrible beyond anything, I think in the long run this event will bring everyone back down to earth, and really take take a long hard look at the things that are really important in life. Maybe we will get back to a point where we're not so selfish, we are more friendly and don't pine for the superficial things in life. Phones, cars, tvs and ipods mean nothing, and I'm sure a lot of people have realised that since the floods started. You can replace an ipod. You can't replace a loved one. Hopefully that will be the silver lining to get our society back on its feet and become a humane society again. 

Man, I want to write more about my day but I'm kinda exhausted now. From yoga, from that vent and because the fan is whirring and my eyeballs are drying out.

I will go over some points of my day in simplified form so I don't have to think too hard...

• The delivery van was making weird noises today, and I had to drive down to Tweed and back to pick up some printing and make some stationery deliveries. It sounded like a robot was being murdered in amongst all the cogs and grinds. Bossman said it was happening since yesterday. It was a bit unnerving travelling down the highway at 100km/hr with the sound of a raped blender screeching in your ears. But, I made it down, and made it back. So all was well. There were some bank spots along the Tugun Bypass that had collapsed at one point (landslides, yikes!!!) and the traffic was reduced to 40km/hr (grrr... and siiiigh...). Semi excitement, but it just looked like roadworks, I couldn't see any landslides.
• Coming back from Tweed I was driving behind an Ambulance. To start he was travelling 10km below the speed limit in the left hand lane (fair enough, but still a gripe for me... I hate dawdly drivers...) BUT. The clincher was, he was taking the same exit as me... and... HE DIDN'T FREAKIN' INDICATE. You are an emergency vehicle, you should be practicing SAFE DRIVING TECHNIQUES. Didn't indicate to turn off, and didn't indicate AGAIN to turn left at the traffic lights. I was so mad. HOW DANGEROUS. Stupid Ambulance driver. I yelled out my window as we were pulling up to yet another set of traffic lights to "USE YOUR FREAKIN' INDICATOR YOU MORON!"... and wa-hey! Wouldn't you know it, he turned on his indicator. At the last second mind, but still. He did it. That annoyed me. That whole thing annoyed me. 
• Paul was talking to me this afternoon about how wearing pants is a smart thing to wear during flooding, as the water is septic you would be in less risk of cutting your legs with long pants, and in turn getting diseased. He then went on to describe something on the... as he said it... and I seriously don't know how else you WOULD say it, but god it made me laff... "if you get it on one pant..." What else do you call one half of a pair of pants? Left pant, right pant. It makes sense, but sounds ridiculous! Hahaha.
• Work was very busy today, constant and controlled for most of it - until like, half an hour before I was due to finish. Mark wasn't in, was making his way back from Broadbeach, and just as I was about to wind down and get ready to leave, in comes an inundation of customers, all wanting really long-winded things (ie. large scale printing from THEIR laptop to our printers... a customer whose 10 invoice books are missing his ABN number... ergh that one was my fault too so I felt sh!t about that one... someone coming in wanting to talk about business cards...) all the while I was trying to do some important artwork for a big client of ours, trying to send off about 3 different emails, all very important ones that would need to be out that afternoon.
  Ugh. That was a headache. The invoice books sh!t me the most, because I had a gut feeling when I sent them off before Christmas that I missed something on them. The client never viewed the final proof, just gave the ok for a 2/3's done job. Ugh. It was all very rushed. So I'm going to offer him a stamp at a discounted price with his ABN on it. I will. inform Mark of this tomorrow. Hopefully it's ok. I thought it was very sensible of me to think of a solution like that. Rather than taking back the books, wasting them just to reprint nearly $400 worth of stuff again with just the ABN added. Silly that would be. 

Aaaand that's me. I'm buggered. Signing off. Stay safe everyone out there in waterworld, hope you're all doing ok (or your loved ones if they're in affected areas). Hopefully the worst of it will be over by tomorrow.


Thinking of everyone in flood affected QLD tonight...

~ Peace, Love & Mungbeans ~

xxx