The crazy old lady who lives below us....

So...where do we even begin...there is a mean, 95-year old lady who lives below us in our apartment building and she hates us. correction: she hates laura and lauren (who she thinks is one person...lauren) and loves the boys, for some unknown reason. First of all, we are pretty good neighbors (we dont make too much noise, we havent had any real parties other than thanksgiving, and we try and talk to her sometimes cuz she is lonely ... and mean). that being said, she still hates lauren (and laura by association) with a passion. Here are just a few of the things that she has accused us of doing:

1. a couple of weeks ago, our key (lauren and laura's..yes we share a key) to get into the building wasnt working that well. we would have to jiggle the lock and push the door in to get it to work (sometimes it took us about 5 minutes...we felt like ace ventura, pet detective...if you remember that part of the movie). anyway, Crazy old lady lives right by the door and so one time she came out as we were doing this and..through the door (bc she wouldnt let us in!) she accused us of using a screwdriver to jimmy the lock to get in instead of our keys. (she thought thats what was making all the noise...because clearly, using a screwdriver to break in to our complex is a much more efficent way of entering than just using the key itself). after explaining to her that the key was sticking, that we had put in a call to get a new one, and apoligizing for the key-jiggling noise, she responded by saying "if you keep using that screwdriver, youre going to ruin the lock for all the rest of us!" again, lady, we're not using a freakin screwdriver! anyway, after all this, she finally let us into the apartment and was telling us that we werent using the key correctly. she took our key and went outside to show us the proper way to get in and, much to our enjoyment, couldnt get in! hahaha. she had to ask us to let her in. we thought seriously about just letting her sit out there for an hour or two, but didn't. so after another 5 minutes of explaining to her that we were going to get a new key, she finally let us go upstairs. summary: she is crazy.

Michael went downstairs to talk to her one time to try to convince her not to evict us. he was there for about an hour and came back with all sorts of insight into her crazy opinions and theories about us:

1. she only hates the girls...she thinks we are purposely stomping around in heels (which we have never done in the apartment...we put them on at the door as we leave) to try to make noise because "we like to pick on an old lady" ... also, anyone who wears heels would know that you would never put them on until right before you go out in attempt to salvage any feeling in your feet later in the night.

2. after mike told her that it was actually the boys' room above hers and thats who was actually making the noise (dropping belts, phones, etc. on the floor), she theorized that theres no way the boys could be making that noise and that after the boys leave, we go into their room and drop things on the ground to bug her.

3. she bought a whistle so that we would think she was the police...a) we never even heard a whistle, and b) where does she think she is? 1920s london? no cops use whistles anymore. and, for that matter, the thought of her sitting down there whistling to herself frankly just makes us laugh. hahahahahahaha.

anyway, if we get evicted and are homeless on christmas, you'll know why. perhaps we can use this blog as some sort of evidence for the police at a later point.

IN OTHER NEWS:

- we realized that the restaurant parker works at is really really dodgy when she witnessed the chef and owner get in a full on fist fight in the kitchen the other day. they were pushing each other up against the appliances and throwing punches. fearing for her safety, parker left the kitchen temporarily. no one has mentioned the incident since. WEIRD.

- we had our first delicious mexican food meal the other day (yes that is blogworthy news). we found this cafe down the street that serves mexican on fridays and saturdays. this (as you can guess) excited us greatly. after consuming large amounts of fajitas and burritoes, we finished up with churros and vowed to go there every weekend until we leave. YUM.

- we listened to live christmas carols while laying out on the beach the other day ... we are starting to get used to this whole sunny, warm christmas thing. you can't beat simultaneous enjoyment of the beach and rockin' around the christmas tree.

- OH YEAH, and for anyone who knows parker. we rented home alone and watched it 3 times in 2 days. parker recited every line in the movie (much to everyone else's dismay) and enjoyed herself immensely! FULLER ... go easy on the pepsi!

- one last thing, parker and died made a PHENOMENAL gingerbread house the other night (ok it was one of those ez-build ones) but it was still pretty amazing. now all we have to do is to convince the boys not to eat it :)

**** this is a really long blog entry. so we will sign off. hopefully you haven't stopped reading by now. in closing, we hope you are (still) having a wonderful holiday season and getting those elastic waist stretch pants ready for christmas dinner! xoxoxo

Christmas in Australia

Seasons Greetings!! It has been a sort of strange holiday season so far, seeing as how it has been warm, sunny, and there isnt christmas music playing in stores like back in the states. But, despite all of this, we are finally getting in the christmas spirit now because we have a tree! We had waited too long and they sold out at all of our local stores, so Lauren and Mike took a bus to a store in a neighboring town and bought us a wonderful christmas tree for $9. We decorated it yesterday with lights and ornaments while listening to some christmas tunes that Laura has on her ipod. Now we are officially feeling the christmas spirit!


A couple of days ago, we attended a Lucia party (apparently a huge Swedish holiday) hosted by our Swedish friend, Elin. We ate all sorts of Swedish treats and drank Glogg (Lar and CK, I'm sorry to tell you that it tasted way better than yours did on christas eve...but done be sad, it was made by a real Swedish girl, after all). We also learned a "Lucia" song in swedish and sang it multiple times (although we probably were way off because swedish is a very hard language to learn).

In a week, Lauren is heading west to Perth with her friend, Nick (who studied abroad in Berkeley) to spend the holidays with his family. Laura and her fellow roomies plan to go to Bondi beach and BBQ for the non-traditional christmas celebration, if they dont have to work, that is. Lauren gets back from Perth on the morning of New Years Eve, we still dont have plans for that celebration, but it is one of the craziest holidays here so we are thinking about heading into the city (Sydney) to watch the fireworks over the harbour bridge. We hope you all have a fabulous holiday and stay warm!

p.s. sorry about the sideways images, i cant figure out how to rotate them!

Some pictures for your enjoyment

Hey everyone! Theres not too much new information to report, but due to popular requests we are going to try to upload more pictures for your viewing pleasure. We have just continued to bum around Sydney and Coogee, going to the beach during the day and going out at night. We have decorated our apartment in christmas decorations, hanging tinsel inside, and lights on our balcony. Laura got a job as a waitress at a cafe in Coogee Beach, Lauren is still working as a waitress and is looking into nannying sometime soon. Today we did a huge, much-needed, load of laundry. Due to the fact that we dont have a dryer, we went up onto our roof to hang-dry our clothes. Out of nowhere...a HUGE thunderstorm came (its not all sunny, apparently) and the next thing we knew we were on the roof getting drenched while trying to keep our clothes dry...sadly, to no avail. Anyway, we hope you are all enjoying the holiday season and hope to hear from you soon!

Welcome

CHEERS MATES!


Hi!!!!! Both Parker and Died are now in Australia and absolutely loving it! Parker is working as a waitress at a local cafe and Died is about to start looking for a job of sorts. We have been exploring Sydney, laying out on the beach in our hometown of Coogee, and wine tasting in the beautiful Hunter Valley (about 2 hours northwest of the city). We are living with 3 fabulous gentlemen ... Mike and Sam (from Indiana) and Josh (from Canada) ... in an apartment about 100 meters off the beach! Activities in the near future include: surfing, drinking, getting tan, and planning our hippie-travels up the east coast after summer! We miss you all (but not the weather) and look forward to hearing from you. xoxo