An all around good day work wise, with a beautifully compressed 5.5 hour stint at the gym, and a lovely yoga class this afternoon. In between I poached a chicken and made coconut and orange cupcakes, and read some of my absolutely favorite new series of books by Kerry Greenwood, involving a sexy baker/accidental detective. She likes Buffy too, but she has a gorgeous boyfriend - and thus the similarity ends.

Later things went slightly awry, as Miss M left karate in tears because she didn’t get an award she felt she deserved. The poor kid felt totally slighted, and is only happier now because I quickly made pasta (from sauce I’d conveniently pre-concocted last week) to rebuild her energy. We went through the whole “I hate karate, I’ve always hated karate, I don’t want to do it anymore” crisis, and when I tried to remind her how much she’s enjoyed the grappling (or as she says, grabbling) aspect of the classes over the last couple of weeks, she admitted that was fun, but hates all the “boring stuff” (anything not involving grabbling). Now the pasta is finished, and she seems a little less upset.

As an update to anyone interested in my house buying affairs, I mentioned briefly in my last post we’d bummed out at an auction on Saturday. Both of us are kind of over the whole relentless cycle of insanity of the current Melbourne property market, so we’ve decided to find somewhere terrific to rent, and wait until Spring, when there are more properties around and slightly higher interest rates will (hopefully) dampen people’s enthusiasm slightly.

However, last week I discovered I could:

Keep myself together as the bank told us we couldn’t get a home loan for the property because of the zoning, and we’d have to get a business loan instead. When I discovered the interest rate and the term, I told the bank we weren’t interested, and they rang back a couple of hours later saying they could waive some fees and give us an interest rate comparable to a home loan. Accidental negotiation is my favorite kind!

Read a Section 32 quite well.

Find two alternate sources of finance less than eighteen hours before an auction.

Not cry when my “perfect house” went to another bidder.

So, all in all, some great life skills in that bunch. Now to take some deep breaths, and switch myself to the rental part of domain.com!

Today I’m loving: my brother James, who’s been remarkably calm, supportive and awesome throughout this whole process.