traffic fines, blogged law, and the like...

It's that time of year again... time to renew my vehicle licence, and pay traffic fines.

whilst searching for an easier way of paying traffic fines, i.e. online, i came upon this interesting site... a south african attorney firm giving advice and general useful information.

by the by, does anyone know of a website i could use to pay my traffic fines? i did find a jhb site, which alows you to register, and then check out outstanding traffic fines, access water and lights invoices online, enter meter readings, etc. i can't wait for more online services to be offered by my city.

whilst we're on the subject of traffic fines... check out this site for all sorts of handy info, including sighted speed traps per city...

oh so organised... almost

ah well, the long weekend has flown by for most, except for me, only because I was slaving away with sponge paintbrush in hand and cherry coloured paint on fingers and under fingernails. But I finished my furniture. finally. I have even unpacked most of my boxes into it already, and the couch is in its place. Everything is looking so homey, it's scary... how did we get so organised? :) ah, yes, we're the a-sisters... we go to oppikoppi with inflatable mattress and stir fry ingredients in tow... oh and get a cape town chef to cook it up for us too! :D ha ha! what some guys won't do at (their mistaken assumption of) sharing a tent with sisters... anyways...

I did a little pottering around the garden yesterday! Actually potted our herbs. Bought a lovely pot from Builder's Warehouse down the road, filled it with potting soil, and got my nails all dirty again... it was lovely. The fresh smell of the soil, the feeling of accomplishment when you step back to look at your handywork... priceless. It'll be nice to have my own garden one day, but for now I will relish in outdoor pots...

it's a couch... it's madness!

so we took delivery of our couch yesterday... yippeeeeeee! it's lovely. it's large. it's putty. it's our couch.

even though we haven't moved it where we want it yet, due to *someone*'s unpacked boxes (whistles softly), the place suddenly looks so much more... organised... liveable... like a home. i am so excited about finishing off the staining on my furniture so that I can get everything unpacked, and organised. it's going to be awesome.

have a blessed easter everyone.

a thought...

a good friend of mine recently read my blog and made an interesting observation... although they know me rather well, there are elements of me in my blog that they do not recognise. not that the victoire in real life is completely different to the victoire who blogs, but that i come across differently, i guess...

this makes sense to me. i don't just blog the first thing that pops into my mind... i do think about what i write, i think about who my audience might be... i have the opportunity to compose what i say, and take time in saying it, in contrast to every day talking. i am quite sure that my blog is a little bit more of the victoire i want people to think i am.

... and the beat goes on

I am sure I don't need to remind you that it's April. I find myself reminding me about this fact almost daily. What happened to the first quarter of 2006? I ask you. Even so... even though I have no clue where all those months went, when I sit back and think about it, so much has happened in my life this year... I mean real life changing things. Things that I have been wanting to do for a very long time, and are finally falling into place. And other things I wonder whether were necessary at all, but no regrets, eh?

of course the biggest of these is moving out of the nest at the end of February. There's a life changer right there. Although still learning to deal with all this new-ness, I am really enjoying it. amazing what having a place of my own (albeit shared with the sista-sista) has done for me. I feel alive everytime I think of my place.

then there's starting pottery classes. i don't think of myself as particularly creative, but i enjoy the freedom to express my creativity... just working with the clay, squishing between my fingers and getting under my nails is theraputic. i think it's the freedom, not caring about the outcome, just enjoying the now of pinching a ball of clay into an object, which may be functional one day or ... or experimenting with patterns, ideas... anything goes.

another avenue of creative expression is my diy stints around the new place... most recent of which is staining some pine bedroom furniture i bought from mistry's (in randburg, down hans strijdom). they have really not bad looking stuff at really decent prices. the furniture's not exactly perfectly designed, but when considering what i'm spending on it it doesn't really make that much of a big difference. anyways i have finished the 1.8m long book rack, and will be starting on the 1.7m draw set i'm using as a base to the book rack this long weekend. *phew* it's pretty hard work, but when it's all over i'll really appreciate it.

i'm quite happy to announce that i finally received a replacement notebook for the one that was stolen in the beginning of feb. so i am typing this up behind a beautiful ibm thinkpad with stunning 15" monitor, built in wi-fi, bluetooth, and a fingerprint reader! ha ha! to log in all i need to do is swipe my finger over the reader, which is just next to the mouse pad. :) really cool, and impressive (albeit to show off every now and again) piece of techie gadgetry. you have no idea how much i missed having a notebook. weird that i should celebrate being able to take work home! :) guess i am just strange that way.

oooooh.... more home news... our couch we ordered from coricraft 5 weeks ago, and were told would take 6 weeks, is being delivered tomorrow! hurrah! things are coming together so nicely. it will go so well with our new home entertainment theatre :) heheheh... I think that we have just about finished all the spending we need to for a long time.

now all we need is to have a good house warming, and we're set.

no such thing as a free lunch...

I found this article via a BizAssist.co.za newsletter... interesting, if somewhat obvious :) but then again, one never knows...

Making sure of Working From Home Smalls ads
It usually starts off like this: "wouldn't you like to stay at home today, not fight the commute to work, and be able to have that extra cup of coffee in the morning and read the paper." The advertisement will then go on to talk about all of the great money you can make immediately. Sometimes, the claims are upwards to R10 000 a month and guess what, you can make that amount for part-time hours, a maximum of 20 hours a week. My advice is to let your eyes flow right on past this kind of advertisement. Every time I see this kind of sales pitch, I am reminded of the time I was at university in desperate need of a job that would pay some good money. I walked into class one day and on my chair was a slip of paper advertising a job that would pay me R50 an hour. Now, to a university kid, that seems like plenty of cash. Of course, there wasn't a whole lot of details as to how I was going to make this R50 an hour. Being very naive, I called the number, interviewed for the position, was told it was a very professional company and that with my "great attributes," I would fit right in. The job was going around selling knives to the general public. During and after my initial training, I was told what was really meant by the wage of R50 an hour. My trainer told me that if I sold a certain number of the sets, my pay would figure out to be at least R50 an hour. At the same time, I was told not to worry because I could put in 5 to 7 hours a week and make R3 000 for the week. Well, needless to say, that job lasted about a month. I found out very quickly that if someone where to make the kind of money they were talking about; you would have to work 60-70 hours a week. And even then, there was no guarantee. What am I saying here? Every claim made is not what its cracked up to be.

Research the Claims
If you think an opportunity looks really great, it may be, but check it out first. Do some research, find out exactly what will be involved, what exactly will you have to do and how much money will you have to put into it.

It will Take Work
The best policy to live by is this: if anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. And that means good old hard work. Find out what you like to do, then do your homework and find out how you can turn that like into a business. You will be investing your time, money, and hard work into your business and hopefully you will make it work, but at least you're going into things with your eyes wide opened.

Googlism

I haven't laughed, and laughed so *well*, in a long time... for a bit of irreverance, search for your name on googlism

some of my favourites for victoire:

* victoire is delicious and adventurous (yep! you know it! ;) )
* victoire is only the size of a human child (hmmmm...)
* victoire is not ready to delve into the past (?! heh heh)
* victoire is convenient in (... ?!)
* victoire is not available in rosé
* victoire is waiting for an inscription at the world inheritance
* victoire is very poor (smite the rich...)
* victoire is dominating her friend tose (I had nothing to do with that...)
* victoire is hard to resist
* victoire is listed as a feminine form of victor...
* victoire is the adventure
* victoire is another nickname (there's a longer version?!)
* victoire is resplendent
* victoire is actually a light whitish spiral (really?)
* victoire is just out of
* victoire is mine
* victoire is also a favourite for students
* victoire is on horseback
* victoire is someone who firmly believes in thinking globally and acting locally
* victoire is the heart of the city of saint
* victoire is being in the avant
* victoire is a focal point with many cafes and bars
* victoire is the looney tunes nut