Back in Town

I am back in Adelaide after my week down at my mother's farm.

Naturally, having spent time on the farm, I am sore. Not from gardening (moving garden beds and laying new ones), and not from installing a new fireplace in the living room; no, my thumbs and forefingers still ache from the fencing on the first day - Noel prefers to use a hard steel wire for his ties and I had to bend hundreds of the damned things.

Also there were Uncle Warren and Auntie Faye. She is half aboriginal and one of the 'stolen generation'; "best thing they could have done for me" she said, she has been re-united with her mother's family and is grateful for being taken away from that life and given what she considers a much better one.

My sister and her friend drove down to stay the night and give me a lift back. And I have returned laddened with scones and biscuits. My mother stated more than once something to the effect of not having liked one of her children being overseas and too far away from her.

I contacted two agencies when I got back last week, and both responded very quickly, and both have been talking to me today and running short-lists past me. I have one other agency that I do have to contact later this week. This is so different from my reception in Singers.

I am staying at my sister's again tonight, but am hoping to move into a small apartment tomorrow; I am calling one back when it passes seven and an agent about another tomorrow morning. But that second one is unfurnished, so I have to make a couple of calls about furniture rental first. Boils down to one furnished one bedroom apartment just out of the CBD for $375 per week, or one two bedroom apartment in the CBD but unfurnished for $275. I have looked at one online furniture rental site and it quotes about $200 a week, but I phoned another guy and he said it was possible to get a package together for one hundred or less but to call after ten in the morning.

I think that the CBD apartment would be worth at least $400 a week to me including furniture, but it is limited to a two month rental only, whereas the other place could be extended unlimited. Still, you can get student apartments in the CBD for less than two hundred a week, often for only about one hundred; not as nice, true, but cheap.