Smoke in the air in Stuff

There’s still a lot of smoke in the air. I normally wouldn’t notice it from ground level just walking around, but being on the 18th level of an apartment building, I can definitely see it. I woke up at around 1:30am this morning hacking my lungs up. I had my window open, thinking I’m getting fresh-air in, but obviously not. I looked up where the nearest fires are and I guess it could be coming from any number of nearby fires from the Gold Coast, but according to this it looks like it’s probably the new one out near Ipswich. There’s not much nearby me to the north. I don’t think my coughing is going to go away while this smoke is lingering.
Look at me complaining about my respiratory system. People have lost their homes, koalas have died. I have no idea if the fires are as bad as they were the last few weeks, as I don’t watch any news programs anymore. They seem to be all contained in my state at the moment at least.
I set up my old air purifier that I was using at my old place. It seems to work a lot better here and was cooling the air at 10 degrees cooler, which was a surprise. That could have also been a reason I woke up coughing, as it probably needs a run-through after being in storage for so long. I really want the Dyson air purifier but it’s $900 lol. I think I’ve already whinged about that.
And it wasn’t included in the Cyber Monday sales, trust me, I looked.

Unfortunately, my credit card did cop a beating yesterday. With it being Cyber Monday and also my birthday week (it’s tomorrow), I decided to treat myself a little. I booked a Tiger flight to Canberra for February next year. It’s the one capital city I’ve yet to visit, and it’s our nation’s Capital! So that’s exciting. I managed to get a Cyber-Monday flight and hotel, and I’ve decided to go for 5 days, Monday to Friday. I probably don’t need anywhere near that long, but I want to have a good look around. I then applied for the two days extra I need off work for make that trip happen, and it’s only about a week before my Mardi Gras trip, which I’ve already paid for, so that’s going to be a pretty cool month if it all works out. The worst thing about booking airfare sale fares is not knowing where I’m at in life, but hey, it’s not like I really do anything. Chances are high lol. And flights to Canberra are normally like $200 each way so to get them for $79, I thought, “Why not?”
I also kept browsing more sales sites and a lot of them just didn’t appeal to me, like a lot of them just didn’t seem like good deals at ALL, and it seemed that the supposed 50%-70% off prices were just hiked up from higher prices, to unsuspecting customers. Typical corporate greed. But I did look at getting a Google Nest Hub to replace my old alarm clock from the 90’s that I only really use to look at to see the time, I don’t even use it as an alarm anymore (I use my phone). It looks interesting and it was half price. I was sold when I got to the payment page to see it was also buy-one-get-one-free. Fuck, that’s $200 for free. I’ll have to play around with it when it arrives, but yay for new gadgets. I figure I’ll put the spare one in the kitchen so Phil can use it too.
So yeah, adding a $900 Dyson air purifier to the credit card as well probably isn’t the smartest idea and I’ll deal with what I got. Then today I went into the city because they were going our rental inspection (Phil and I were cleaning all morning - I got out outside balcony clean! Who knew it was white underneath?) and I didn’t want to be home whilst they were doing that, and I ordered breakfast at a cafe I like and browsed more sites and bought some t-shirts I thought looked pretty rad, and I also bought a new fitted sheet for my bed since my current one has a big-ass rip in it (still not sure how that happened) and I went with the cheap one instead of splurging on the Egyptian cotton, like I would have prefered. I do have some control it seems haha. So yes, credit card - bad Matt, bad! But hey, I justify it by trying to tell myself I got some good deals and they are birthday presents to myself. I did also pay a $2300+ credit card ^youch^ balance from last month but I knew that was going to be a big one because of the China trip. Oh isn’t money exciting? Not.
I’ve actually been wanting to write an entry about money and expenses and saving and things, because I feel it’s something none of my friends ever talk about - you know just little savings tips I do and budgeting and such. I don’t earn much but I live within my means (mostly). The problem is the entry probably wouldn’t translate well between countries. I know my country is known for being quite expensive. I love reading about money tips and ideas and what everyday people do to get by and save up and make big purchases and how they go about it, especially if it’s from other people who don’t have a huge disposable income (like my little brother who works in the mines up north and is about to spit out his third spawn into the world.)
Anyway, I’m rambling now. I’ll think about what I wanna write about.
It seems to have gotten even smokier outside since I began writing this entry, eep.