Losing my blogging virginity

OK, so I'm tentatively embracing blogging and am following in the footsteps of the ever lovely Sherdie. So now we have someone to blame!

I arrived in Melbourne 'for keeps' almost a week ago, with husband and dogs in tow (or perhaps more precisely, husband had myself and dogs in tow having already been here for a month). I'm currently job-less and loving it! I'm fully prepared to become a domestic goddess until I get a job, although I don't really cook or clean, so this is proving more difficult than I thought. I can knit, and am really good at drinking tea and watching Oprah, so I reckon I'm halfway there.

I have moved into a mint green Californian bungalow which is older than any house in home-town Canberra (well, maybe not, but older than houses I've rented anyway). Polished floor boards, freezing cold bathroom, oldest kitchen ever, beautiful high ceilings, big rooms, door frames so low to bathroom and toilet that husband has to duck to go in, did I mention it was mint green?, stained glass in front windows, nice garden and two lemon trees. Feels like home already!

Have ventured out onto the roads by car a few times, having absolutely no idea where I was going. Managed to stumbled across Northlands shopping mall, which was slightly disappointing (this is probably a good thing for my bank account). Have found Preston Markets and think I'd make it to Brunswick St if I had to. Could probably tail-gate a tram to get to the city too. So all in all I am slightly confident of my ability to be mobile.

So far I've unpacked millions (well, maybe tens) of boxes and have a mountain of bubble wrap sitting in my dining room. You would think that a mountain of bubble wrap would be anyone's idea of bubble-filled heaven, right? Alas, no, jumping on a mound of bubble wrap turns out to be a few pops, but mostly me hurting my bum. I think I'll have to revert to the good ole 'one-by-one' method of popping bubble wrap - seems to be more fulfilling that way!

There are a few things which I am confused about. Mostly it involves supermarkets. What is with Wooly's being called Safeways? It's just wrong! The "Woolworths" brands are still called Woolworths in the Safeways stores, and their ads are the same, they just say Safeways. I'm so confused. On a scarier note, "Safeways" implies that there is also, somewhere, an "Unsafeways" - that keeps me awake at night.

And you have to pay a deposit for trolleys! What's that about? Are they really worth stealing? Can you sell them on the black market? Is a $2 deposit really going to stop me stealing one if I was intending to sell it on the black market? I think $2 is a pretty good price for a trolley. I feel like I'm missing some really important part of the story - like watching an Agatha Christie movie and missing the denouement. Did something happen in Melbourne that forced supermarket owners to go "That's it, there are too many black market trolleys out there! They are sub-standard, and consumers are being ripped off by these counterfeit trolleys. We'll charge people a $2 deposit from now on to use our genuine, high quality Safeways trolleys!"

I'm sure that supermarkets do lose money on trolleys over time, but I can't understand the whole deposit thing. Maybe they should have some sort of electrical tag like on clothes, where if you take it too far away all this blue ink spurts out of them or an alarm goes off. Or could they microchip them like they do wheelie bins on the South coast? (That's a whole other weird debate that I won't get into right now.)

Thankfully on my first visit to Safeways there was a lonely trolley sitting free, so I didn't have to do the lame "Um, I'm from interstate - how do I get a trolley free?" thing. I'm still a bit scared about it though.

I haven't decided yet whether to start saying "Safeways" or continue to say "Wooly's" as some sort of stubborn cultural throw-back. To assimilate or not to assimilate?

Well, this has been quite enjoyable and therapeutic.