Cairo....here we come!!

So Jena and I are so far from being packed you could almost say our rooms look like we aren't going anywhere! Well, hers kinda does, mine just looks like the usual bomb site it always does, complete with a big sexy red couch planted in it!!

Jena and are I VERY excited and have spent the last two days printing itineraries, organising unnecessary passport photos, buying hand sanitiser and soap (cabin crew dearly love that dettol fresh smell!), borrowing backpacking backpacks and generally just trying to work out what to pack.

I've lovingly washed most of my clothes today, am preparing to say farewell for a fortnight to my computer, hair curler and dryer and straightener (which I may just sneak into the backpack!), my nail polish collection, my shoes, my dresses and all things feminine.

I'm about to become a dirty backpacker!

I don't know what horrifies me more: the fact that I can't wash and straighten my unruly crazy curly hair every day like I normally do or the fact that I'm quite excited about it! Not that I condone holiday snaps of people with bad hair IN ANY WAY, but I guess for this part of the world, it may be necessary.

Gone are the suites at the Hilton, the saunas at the Meridians and the pillow menus from the Sofitels....and hello to desert camping, stair-hiking and camel riding.

To be honest, I can't wait!!

However, I do fear for my tan. Recently diagnosed with some kind of dermatitis on my face because I naughtily used some cortisone cream for farrrrrr too long on my skin, I've been placed on anti-biotics for 8 weeks and have been told a common side effect is being photo-sensitive. I instantly wondered if this would make me look fabulous in photos, and must have looked rather hopeful and dreamy when the doctor interupted my reverie and informed me that I'll be SUN-sensitive more than normal and could be prone to burning or irregular tanning.

Great, just great! After having the world's worst day and getting a parking fine to visit this delightfully horrid doctor because I left my wallet at home and there was only paid parking, I wondered if this whole anti-biotic/bionic-tanning ordeal was even worth it. I have two weddings to go to next month and I've lovingly cultivated this tan of mine (if we'd even call it a tan!) to make sure I don't have tan marks for my pretty party dresses and NOW I plan a holiday in the Middle East at the end of summer - a holiday I'll have to spend in singlets getting and awesome singlet tan!!

Oh well, I'll be seeing a wonderful collection of old rocks and ruins and stuff for my trouble....!

In all seriousness, I did an ancient history class at school and LOVED every minute of it. It's always been a dream of mine to visit the pyramids and the sphinx and now that I'm finally going to do it, I don't care what kind of tan I come back with or if I've got so much sun that all my freckles have joined together!!

Catch you all after Egypt and Jordan! xoxo

Hello....I Think I Love You!

So uh, yesterday I fell in love! Lustful, sweet, big-hearted heart-swelling love!

The object of my desires is....a couch. That's right, I went to Ikea with my trusty friend Michael to buy him some things for HIS new room and what do I do? Fall in love with this red leather creation from heaven the minute I clapped eyes on it.

What's a girl to do? I obsessed over it for the entire day, referring to it as MY COUCH; thinking about where I'd put it in my room; verbalising where I'd put it in my room; plotting, planning and strategising about how I'd get it home to Australia when I eventually fly the coop and generally just pissing Michael and Jena off with my lusting.

As luck would have it....and with a hefty sprinkle of ''I need to pop back to Ikea'' from myself, Michael and I returned to the store that housed my beloved today and there she was....still sitting where I first saw her, a gorgeous shade of deep cherry, just begging me to make room for her in my hopelessly cluttered bedroom....

After much discouragement from Michael and pre-buyer's remorse thoughts swimming around in my head, I hit the ATM, forked over the cash and waited patiently for her to be delivered this evening.

And may I just say, even though now I don't actually think she's made of leather, she looks lurrrrrv-ley!!!

Antony and The Johnsons

Since I'm such a caring and sharing person and I'm awake at 1.06am for some ungodly reason that can't be blamed on jetlag, I thought I'd share something pretty awesome with you all.

A super-gorgeous, very talented musical friend of mine who lives in Finland (you know who you are) was discussing music with me recently and clued me in on an awesome band. Jena already knows about them, no surprise there with all of her net-cruising and pj-clad blog reading, but I'm sure there are many of you out there who haven't yet heard of ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS and if you haven't, you need to!

Put aside the slight corniness of some of the songs, check this out. This guy's voice is trés amazing!!

The Lake:



Rapture:



Fistful of Love:



If you check them out on youtube, don't be put off my his mullet or how weird he looks when he sings live or how whack the clips are that some people have made. The ones I've just put up are a little odd but they're the best example of his voice.

Enjoy!!

Did you say HIKING?!?!

Now, as you all may have gathered, Pink Poodle is not the most physically active of people. She wants to be but it's just not in her genetic makeup...but if giraffes can genetically manipulate and evolve themselves over millenia to have long necks, then certainly something can be done about a certain pooch's fitness levels!!

I wrote eons ago about joining the gym and my super trainer and well that's about all I wrote. I persisted with him for 5 months and then found out he'd been training me incorrectly because he's an IDIOT. I was being trained like a man, and luckily I'm not a man because if I was I'd be MASSIVE after that long. Heavy weights are not the way forward.

Anyway I fired him, hired another and have since dropped him too. No great advances but I'm trying my hardest to fall in love with the treadmill. It's an uphill battle...pun intended. I'm happy to sit on a bike and peddle for 40 minutes, but pop me on the treadmill and I feel a sense of dread, like I've just been handed a life sentence. The most peculiar thing happens to me when I run - just when I think I've mastered it, that I CAN DO IT, I look down and see that I've been running for a grand total of like 4.38 minutes. My brain recognises that while this is indeed a triumph of sorts, it's still a hell of a long way short of the 20 solid minutes I'm striving for and my whole body constricts and almost hurts as it realises just how much pain I have left to endure. Burning lungs, fear of falling backwards off the machine or tripping over my size 41 feet and falling face-first and smashing my freshly-whitened teeth on the controls....yes, all of these thoughts circulate through my jiggly brain as I jog.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to make your brain quiet? It's like when Charlotte has to see the fertility doctor in Sex and The City - she can't make her thoughts stop. I do my best thinking at the gym, but sometimes everything goes into overdrive and I have to just blast my eardrums with music to drown it all out. I've heard a properly constructed playlist is the way to go if I want to be a runner. I've constructed the playlist and now just need to persist with the running business....

In other breaking news (that broke about 4 months ago) our company recently came up with the bright idea of sending us on unpaid leave in order to save money. This really was a bright idea - I wasn't taking the piss. Thousands of crew jumped at the chance, myself included. I managed to score all of October off work and I'm so excited I'm wagging my ponytail like an excited puppy!

Jena and I have plans for embarking on a two-week extravaganza-type tour of Jordan and Egypt and then I'm heading home for the other two weeks to spend time with my nearest and dearest, celebrate two weddings, two younger cousin's birthdays and dash about like a mad woman and meet new babies, see new houses and generally just kiss people I've been missing. Maybe I should step up the running if I want to fit all that in....oh AND I get to catch a 2.45am flight back to Dubai on MY BIRTHDAY. That'll just be the high point of my holiday...fingers crossed for a few days off in early November so I can fly out a day or two later and enjoy Mum's awesome cooking. Perhaps I should stop thinking about falling off treadmills and start strategising which cake I want her to cook me for dinner....

I must say now, Jena deserves all credit for planning this holiday. While I am the one in our relationship who can read subway maps upside down and covered in mud, she is the planner. I am crap at planning, preferring to just wing it. My mate Michael set a perfect example of winging it in Jordan and Egypt earlier this year and when I suggested following his lead Jena shot me a look that said "do I look like a FOOL?!?!?!"

Clearly she is not a fool (when it comes to planning!) and has booked us onto 2 tours, one of each place, 2 flights and numerous other things. What she forgot to mention to me was that this plan of hers involves HIKING. My job was to compile a reasonable amount of background notes from the itineraries and things we were given so we know what we're looking at (how old the rocks are and what exactly the Pyramids were really all about) and how much money to take and what currencies to take it in, blah blah. So, there I was, hurriedly converting all of our tickets and bookings into documents that could be saved on my USB stick so I can print them out for Miss Planner and I came across the following line that sent a shock of fear and treadmill-sized dread into my very core: A good level of physical fitness is required for certain parts of this trip. On the day we visit Mt Sinai and St Katherine's Monastery you can hire a camel for the first two thirds of the journey but the remaining 700 steps to the summit must be completed on foot.

Cue similar untimely-death themed music to that from Jaws....

Apparently the "3750 Steps of Repentance" is a physically demanding trail. I don't have that much to repent for, I swear!!

As I yelled though the wall between our bedrooms that she'd forgotten to mention that small fact to me, I'm sure I heard a little gleeful giggle....guess I'd better up my trips to the gym in the next 4 days if I want to have any hope of arriving at the summit looking human!