It's been an interesting few weeks. Not the most pleasant, and sort of unexpected, but I guess that's the joy of life. Not only have I experienced the loss of someone close to me, I have been under a bit of pressure at work and I had my car broken into on Friday night. You would think that it would be easier to start 2008 with a fresh slate, but unfortunately something is in the air.

Despite these things though, I am doing my best to keep my chin up. I finally turned 23 on the 24th of January, and I had an awesome surprise pot-luck birthday dinner with obligatory icecream cake. It was a really nice surprise, and I was very spoilt by the end of the day.

Along with the birthday came some awesome birthday gifts, and I will be able to prompt myself to use one in particular - being an artists easel. I've been trying my best to get into the habit of doing a few paintings, and my boyfriend is trying to prompt that habit for me.. Eventually I will do something about that, and hopefully the outcomes will be posted on this website.

Last weekend also gave us a a new tenant at our flat for an indefinate period of time. We helped shift Lana into our place as her lease had run out, and she unfortunately hadn't found a place that wanted her - so she is crashing at our place, and if things work out, might live here for a while.

Apart from that - life is slowly coming along. It's just weird how things turn out. Next year, instead of giving me happy wishes for next year, give me a fuel voucher or something instead!

So, while things were going to a swimmingly fine start, I get some news. The shock-how/what/why-sort of news, which has left my headspace in a less desirable place than I would like it to be.

My close friend and co-worker died yesterday. Her, and her husband were trying to cross a river, which had risen due to the rain from the previous day. They were forced to construct a make-shift shelter as they waited for the current to die down. Unfortunately, as she tried to cross the river, she was swept away. Her body was discovered this morning.

I am feeling somewhat numb, and a little lost for words. This death is the first I have ever had that has been someone significantly close to me, and I suspect once I am back at work, it will be very hard for the first few weeks, if not more.

I am thinking of you, Annie. May you rest in peace. You touched my life in a fantastic way. You will be dearly missed.

So, in less than a day, I have been able to create a half decent site to my liking, designing the bits that needed to be re-designed, moved my domain to Discount Domains and with the help of Gold, I have free hosting and Drupal installed so I can manage content (including this blog).

While I do post on LiveJournal periodically, I hope to post more, up-to-date ramblings here. This is basically my space to do whatever I like - which I have been meaning to do for some time now!

Hopefully, if all goes well and I start to get some traffic through here, I might install a Forum module, but for now I am quite stoked with how smoothly this site has grown today.

I hope you will enjoy this site and it's content - I endeavour to have more useful and enjoyable information posted soon.

Please, by all means, comment and give me your feedback. While there is still some tweaking to do here and there, I do appreciate any comments you might have.