Try and visualise an interesting title for this post… and then insert it here
I’m planning on rambling about a bunch of different things in this post and subsequently that makes it hard to come-up with a concise and entertaining title… not that it’s stopped me in the past as a majority of my posts don’t really seem to go anywhere, and I don’t think any of my headings have been that fantastic… but I digress…
On Friday night we took Caleb to the airport. He was flying out to Darwin, before heading down to Katherine (or somewhere in the Northern Territory) to visit his biological father for a couple of weeks. This is his second time (or third if you count return-journeys) time flying by himself as an unaccompanied minor. It’s funny because we wouldn’t let Caleb walk 10 minutes down the road to school without adult supervision, but we’re fine to let him jetset around Australia.
Matt (Caleb’s Dad) works in the tourism and hospitality industries and is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades due to the number of different roles he’s had and locations he’s worked at over the years. As he’s been working in the Northern Territory for a year or two, and even before this job, he’s always been into out-doorsy type stuff like camping, fishing etc. etc. and is also fairly good with wildlife (he owns a snake, a turtle and probably a bunch of other reptiles and pets I don’t know about)… not to mention he lives on a property that is literally in the middle of no-where. He was living in a town that had about the same number of residents as my old high-school and the town’s main claim to fame was it’s one and only set of traffic lights. But he’s since moved a little further out and is now living in what could only be best described as a shed.
Kristy had a chat with Caleb earlier today and he’s having a ball so I’m sure that the overly dramatic picture I painted of their place isn’t anywhere near as bad as it sounds, plus Matt and his girlfriend Paula like it… it’s just not my cup-of-tea.
On the topic of camping… I’ve been reflecting back on my experiences from a few weeks ago and now that I’ve caught-up on my sleep (in a very comfortable bed) and I have a functioning internet connection again – in retrospect, the camping experience was pretty fun. Sure there’s a bunch of stuff I’m going to be aware of if we go again, and I’m still certain I would die if you put me in the middle of nowhere, but I’m open to trying it again.
Last night we were given a couple of movie tickets to see Role Models, that Kristy’s Mum had won but couldn’t make the session time. We’ve been to see a few movies lately (Bedtime Stories and Seven Pounds… both of which were pretty good) and had seen previews for Role Models but it just didn’t look like it was going to be particularly funny.
Since the tickets were free, we figured that we had nothing to loose, so we went along and I’m so glad we did because it was one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in ages. All the jokes fall into the category of toilet humour or are generally inappropriate or highly politically incorrect and each one-liner is delivered with a healthy dose of swearing, so if that isn’t your thing, then you probably won’t like it, but it had me in stitches all the way through.
I’ll have to watch it again when it comes-out on DVD to make sure that my opinion hasn’t been swayed by having such low expectations to start with… so I’d appreciate any feedback from anyone else who sees it, but at this point, it’s by far the funniest film I’ve seen all year.
In a couple of weeks is one of my favorite public holidays – Australia Day. I never thought of myself as having deep-seated pride for my country, but there’s something special about drinking beer while sitting in an inflatable kiddies-pool in the back yard; listening to Tripple J’s hottest 100 songs of the previous year with the smell of steak and sausages wafting overhead (along with the odd tennis ball from the game of back-yard cricket next door)… it just doesn’t get much better than that.
This year we’re heading over to Skye and Scottie’s place and amidst the BBQing and beer drinking I believe there’ll be some Wii Sports and Guitar Hero World Tour or Rockband (not sure which) on the cards… so it should be a fun day.
Read MoreI just don’t get camping
We arrived home from our little camping trip around lunch-time yesterday.
To be completely honest with you, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I was expecting. It wasn’t great either, but still not too bad. That being said, we didn’t REALLY go camping. We camped in a caravan park / campsite at Gold Coast’s Main Beach which is surrounded by high-rises. The park had a swimming pool, a little shop for grocery items, wi-fi internet access, public showers/toilets, a playground and if you couldn’t get all the stuff you needed at the park, it was only a short walk to other shops… and the beach was literally across the road.
So when I think of camping, I think of being in the middle of nowhere, no facilities and all you have to survive on is what you’ve brought with you or can find/construct/kill using MacGyver-style equipment such as a coathanger, some gum and a pocket knife.
Funnily enough, when I mention such things to people who enjoy camping, they tell me I have it all wrong. They explain that you can get camping fridges that are powered by your car battery or a generator, you can take bbq’s, ovens and cooking equipment that is more advanced than what I have at home, comfortable beds that inflate by themselves, bug zappers and other anti-pest items, lights, music and the list goes on and on. The thing that puzzles me is that if you’re going to go to all the effort of packing-up a 4×4 and a trailer with all these items to make the bush/mountains/outback seem more like home, why not just stay at home, or save yourself the effort of packing a truckload of stuff when you could just find a hotel that has all these facilities.
Anyways, but we didn’t have many of those camping mod-cons, which is why it was good that we chose to go faux-camping in suburbia.
The first night was brilliant. I was crapping myself wondering how on earth we were going to put up a tent because prior to this trip the only things I’ve put-up are bookshelves from Ikea. The tent’s instructions were in broken-English, the diagrams were crap, but surprisingly, it all seem to fit together reasonably intuitively and we had the tent errected in about 30 mins.
We then pulled-out our $12 gas camping hotplate thingie that we picked-up on sale from K-Mart the day prier, and cooked ourselves some rissoles for dinner and then proceeded to sit on our little beach chairs drinking and chatting until we decided to call it a night.
The following morning we awoke at about 5am to howling winds and rain. After resecuring the tent and checking everything (not that I knew exactly what we were supposed to be checking) everything looked fine, so we went back to bed until about 7am when it was so windy we thought we were going to get blown away. So we got-up, had some baked-beans for breakfast (because that seemed like the thing to do when camping) and then packed away the tent and sat in the car wondering what we were going to do for the next 5 hours until the dance music festival (Summerfieldayze) was set to start. So like all mature responsible adults stuck with a boot-full of alcohol and plenty of time to kill, we decided to start drinking again.
This filled the time nicely.
We then walked to the parkland where the festival was, listened to dance music mixed by the likes of Ferry Corsten, Armin van Buuren, Calvin Harris, Digitalism, Underworld (and the list goes on) for about 6 hours before walking back to the campsite and picking-up some pizza for dinner. This time it only took us about 10mins to re-erect the tent and we were in bed and snoozing within no time.
The next day there was no rain, no wind or anything other than the sun, heat and sound of kids from the surrounding campsites to wake us. Left-over pizza for breakfast before being joined for lunch by Kristy’s Mum, her partner Pete and Caleb. After spending the afternoon chilling with them, Kristy’s Mum and Pete went home and Caleb camped with us for the remaining couple of nights.
The next couple of days were filled with long walks on the beach, building sand castles, playing in the sand dunes, salad sandwiches on the beach watching the waves roll-by, swimming, card-games by torchlight and more beans for breakfast.
All of the above activities were great. What wasn’t so great is that although we had a 3-man tent (and Caleb technically only takes-up the space of half-a-man), it was incredibly squishy and by the final night, I couldn’t handle it and decided to sleep in the car. We had a little camping mattress thingie, but it’s only a few inches thick and although it was fine for the first couple of nights, the rest of the time it’s just painful and feels like you’re sleeping on rocks.
Then there’s the shared showers that are great for washing-off the sand, but I like a nice hot relaxing shower and you just don’t get that same sense of comfort when you’re washing in a little public cubicle in your thongs (or flip-flops / jandals / slappers etc. to my international readers).
The only reading I do is of blogs and I usually spend most of my spare time bumming around on the internet or playing computer games. I tried doing this via my mobile phone but it’s just not the same on a slow 3G internet connection and a 2-inch screen… plus after a few hours of work, the thing needs charging again. And I’m not the only one that needs digital entertainment - it should be noted that kids (and my friend Con) require constant amusement, so in between all the little activities above, we were constantly nagged with “I’m bored”… “what can I do now”. Thankfully he bought his Nintendo DS which helped fill some of the boring bits.
So by the end of the 4th night, I was ready for home. I hadn’t slept well or showered properly for days, all my clothing seemed to have sand in it, I was sunburnt, my lips constantly tasted like I’d been making-out with a salt shaker, I was crankey, fidgety and generally suffering from technology withdrawal… and all of this was from a few days sleeping in a tent in suburbia. I’d hate to see what I’d be like if I had no facilities, no technology and couldn’t buy take-out for dinner every second night.
Would I go camping again? Sure… but only for short weekend trips, otherwise I’d need a bigger tent, a better mattress, some power for my laptop so I could remain geeky while in the wilderness and lots more alcohol. But really, I’d rather save myself the time and effort and just find a nice hotel/motel. Yes it would cost a lot more, but it would also mean a lot less stress, hard work and would be a lot more comfortable – after all, isn’t that why people go on holidays in the first place – to have a relaxing break.
Read MoreChristmas is over… phew
I can be a very happy and festive person, but the over-commercialisation and the fact that it’s by far the busiest time of year for us, always spoils the spirit of the season.
This year (like most other years) Christmas started on Christmas Eve where we joined my Parents for the Chrissy Church service… came home, mucked around organising treats for Santa and putting Caleb to bed… Kristy and I had a few drinks waiting for Santa… he turned-up and we went to bed.
Work-up early on Christmas day with Caleb telling us what he got from Santa, had breakfast with Kristy’s Mum and her partner Pete and then headed over to my Brett and Lyndal’s place (my brother and sister-in-law) for lunch. My brother is one of the most entertaining people you’ll ever meet, so anything gathering where he’s involved is always guaranteed to be fun.
Some of the highlights of the day included my Dad playing Santa and dancing around the room distributing the pressies to the kids, the sarcastic gratitude shown by my teenage nieces and nephews when they received some of their more lame generic presents and Brett pulling-out his African Bongo Drums (and no, that isn’t a euphemism for something else… he really does own African Bongo Drums… don’t ask me why, but he does)… so we had a group drum session which was surprisingly enjoyable.
Mid-afternoon we headed home, had a few more drinks. Didn’t participate in our usual tradition of drinking a good bottle of Scotch at the end of the day, but I did work my way through a bottle of champaign and about 8 beers, plus the few glasses of wine throughout the day, so it’s probably a good thing I didn’t try.
The next day we headed over to Kristy’s Mum’s for lunch, then onto Kristy’s Dad’s for a late dinner.
The following day it was over to Caleb’s grandparents (his biological father’s parents) and we had a big day of eating and drinking with them. Caleb’s Pop is a big fan of scotch, so I couldn’t let the day go by without joining him for a glass or 6.
Got home that night, crashed and didn’t wake-up until late the next day thankful I didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything.
Over the past few days I’ve been recouping, catching up on work and trying to do as little as possible while trying to avoid the 40 degree heat … not to mention that I have a stomach bug that has been hanging around for longer than I’d like. Perhaps it’s my bodies way of saying I shouldn’t have eaten and drank so much.
Tonight (new years eve) we’ll be heading over to Skye and Scottie’s and then over the weekend we’re off to the Gold Coast for Summafieldayze (an annual dance music festival we often go to). We tried to find accommodation at the coast, but given the time of year the best we could do was the camping / caravan park at Main Beach which is just down the road from where the festival is held.
So Kristy and I are going to head down, pitch the tent and dance our asses off (which is no mean feat as our asses are quite substantial). The following day, Kristy’s Mum is going to bring Caleb down, have some Fish & Chips on the beach for lunch and then it’ll be Caleb, Kristy and I camping-out for the next few days on the beach.
I’m crapping myself as I’ve never been camping in a tent and the whole concept freaks me out more than my simple vocabulary can possibly explain. Watch this space as I’m sure I’ll be posting updates on the whole experience.
Read MoreSmile…
Once again it’s been a while since my last update (this seems to be happening a lot lately).
In the ‘big update‘ I did a little over a month ago, I mentioned a few good things and a few bad. One of the bad things was that our house was broken into. Well it happened again. They still didn’t get anything large, but they did manage to get some cash and a few of our geekier portable items like a little DVD player of Caleb’s, laptops etc.
So the last few weeks we’ve been going through the insurance claim process which is always more painful than it should be. Work has also been really busy but some stuff is happening that’s helping the company grow and move in the right direction and we’ve got some big plans to push on ahead in 2009 (well, perhaps not big for some, but big for us).
I don’t have time to do a full update of everything at the moment, which will happen over the next week or so, but I do want to share with you something that brightened my day. Lyndal (my sister-in-law) emailed me the follow video clip and I thought it was awesome (as is she for sharing this)… in fact, if you’re reading this and take the time to watch the video, you’re also up there with the best of them! To everyone – you’re GREAT!
Read MoreKristy’s Family, George updates and Storms
Had a few crap days at work last week… luckily this week has been a lot more productive.
Last weekend was officially filled by Kristy’s family. On Saturday afternoon her Dad and family came over for a BBQ which went well into the evening. On Sunday morning we helped-out Kristy’s niece and then Sunday night Kristy’s Mum came over for dinner. I love Kristy and her family, but at times they can be a bit painful.
George has been coming to work with me over the last couple of weeks and he had his first bath on the weekend. He seemed to like playing in the water although wasn’t quite so excited when we started scrubbing him with the shampoo. Because of his white and black spotted doggy-fro’ he looks kinda fat (and that’s not spelt with a ‘ph’) but the moment he gets wet, George starts looking like a drowned rat (albeit a cute one). We took a couple of photos, but I haven’t downloaded them yet so you’ll have to take my word for it.
We also had him micro-chipped and vaccinated last Friday and this coming Tuesday evening he starts Puppy Preschool which should be interesting.
Other than that, the only other interesting thing that has been happening lately is the weather (yea, it’s kinda lame that I’m about to discuss the weather on my blog) but Brisbane has officially been declared a natural disaster zone (the weather bureau has likened the recent storms to a Category 2 cyclone).
There’s been flash flooding, whole suburbs devastated with some houses beyond repair. 24 hours after the first major storm, there were over 220,000 homes without power and nearly a week later (and a few more heavy downpours) there are still roughly 300 homes that are in the dark despite Energex and SES emergency workers operating in 24 hour shifts for the last 5 days. The army have stepped-in to help with the clean-up and the government are providing financial assistance to families affected.
Lastnight’s downpour uprooted rail lines, flooded roads (there’s 11 mega-litres of water stuck in the Inner City Bypass tunnel which authorities are trying to figure-out how to clear)… schools have closed down due to water damage and transportation issues. It’s really not pretty at the moment. The damage bill has been tipped to exceed $540 million.
My heart goes out to everyone affected and the tremendous efforts of the emergency crews and I’m eternally thankful that our house has remained watertight and unharmed.
Read MoreBig update
I could go on and on about how busy I’ve been lately which is why the blog has been a little neglected (which is true… but it still sounds like a fairly lame excuse) so instead, I’ll tell you about all the stuff that has happened over the last month and a half and then there’ll be no need for excuses.
Before I dive into it, I’d just like to do two quick things. Firstly a warning – if you aren’t particularly interested in long, waffle-filed, stories about me, then turn away now as this post will be both long and full of a lot of pointless information.
Secondly, I’d also like to acknowledge the inspiration that encouraged me to get off my butt and write this post instead of going to bed (which is what I’d much rather be doing as my sleeping patterns are all screwed at the moment… more about that later).
I was going to write this post yesterday, only to discover that I had broken my internet connection by trying to upgrade the firmware on my modem in an effort to get my voIP phone to work with my router’s firewall setup (in retrospect, I should have realised that when I try and do technical things as advantageous as this, it never ends-up well). As I couldn’t seem to roll-back the firmware upgrade, I went-out and purchased a new router only to find that due to a conflict with my wireless network card driver, it crashed my laptop with a blue screen of death. It took me most of Saturday just to discover that the problem was a driver conflict as the machine would either get stuck in a reboot cycle crashing as soon as windows would start or if it did manage to boot in safe mode, it’d end-up crashing after a non-specified amount of time (but inevitably always before I could check my error logs to help diagnose why the errors were happening in the first place). Anyways, I digress…
The motivation for this long-winded update really came down to two people – my Dad and Con.
When I dad lunch with my folks a coupe of days ago, Dad said he wrote his first blog post (Mum argues that it wasn’t a proper blog platform that he was posting to… not to mention the fact that I’m astounded Mum could make this observation) but the simple fact that he’s giving it a go is truly admirable. To be honest everything my parents do (and have done over the years), is a shiny beacon of inspiration and without it, I doubt I (or my family) would be where we are today.
The second piece of inspiration came from my best mate Con, who is also quite inspiring in his own special kinda way, although unlike my parents, his most motivational words are usually preceded by copious amounts of alcohol.
He called me on Saturday morning and although I can’t remember a bulk of the conversation as I was still half-asleep, I felt pretty bad as I’ve been incredibly slack with keeping in touch. A blog post certainly doesn’t make-up for personalised one-on-one contact with friends, but at least it is still a way of sharing stories and events which at the time may have been quite entertaining, but are often forgotten a few weeks later when you’re on the phone and are asked “so… what’s been happening lately”.
Heh, there goes just over 550 words and I haven’t even started talking about what’s been going on… this IS going to be a long post.
A few weeks ago Mel and Joe had their engagement party. It was great to catch-up with Mel’s family and some old familiar friends that I got to know when Mel and I were flatmates. I didn’t know any of Joe’s friends, but let’s just say that some of them were quite interesting (and I don’t mean that in a bad way… I just can’t think of adequate words to describe a couple of them… one of which was offering me beard and moustache advice while policing the entrance to the function room so well that invited guests weren’t even sure if they were allowed in).
On top of the privilege of sharing such a milestone in Mel and Joe’s relationship, highlights of the evening included meeting some really great people, with impressive cocktails (none of which I can remember the names of, but the headache the following day confirmed they must have been good at the time), some not so impressive, but rather effective shots, beer and scotch, all helping to lubricate the conversations and mingling which we often don’t do much at parties.
On top of dealing with a hang-over the following morning, we also discovered that while we were sleeping, our house had been broken into. One of the back, kitchen windows was forced open causing the glass to break (enough to cause damage and require the glass to be replaced… but not quite enough to wake us… although the big night prior probably dulled our senses a little more than usual too).
They didn’t stick around long, nor did they target any larger items. Just grabbed Kristy’s handbag and purse off the dinning room table and then they were gone again. Kristy thought she heard some footsteps, but figured that it was most likely my Dad as he has keys to our house and its not uncommon for him to come over to mow the lawn or do odd-jobs.
We were about to call the police when they pulled-up next-door and it turns-out that a number of houses in the street were burgled and the school a few blocks down the road was vandalised. It was reassuring to know that we weren’t the only ones that were hit, plus our insurance covered the costs of replacing the window and reimbursed Kristy for some of her personal possessions from the handbag… but none of this makes-up for the inconvenience of having to cancel credit cards, update bank account details, get a new drivers license etc. etc.
Not to mention that once you know that a stranger has been able to gain entry to your house (and although unlikely, could re-enter at any time), every time the house creaks or you hear an unfamiliar sound, you start wondering if someone is trying to get in. It’s really quite an unsettling feeling which I’m sure will pass as time goes on, not to mention that we are now a lot more mindful of home security and are looking at getting better locks and screens on the windows when our budget permits.
The following weekend, Kristy and Caleb went to see a local performance of the musical ‘Cats’. I wasn’t particularly interested which turned-out well because there was a trivia night at my parents life-style village. Our team consisted of Mum, Dad, my brother Brett and the last-minute addition of sister Leanne and her husband Bob.
I didn’t hold high-hopes for our team (the Knew Some’s) because even though I love trivia, I’m pretty crap at it. Fortunately I paid attention to Voltron at an early age, so with our powers combined… we ended-up surprising ourselves and came second out of all the teams (along with winning some other lucky door prizes throughout the evening).
The next weekend, it was Vicky’s ‘Girls Night In‘ which I was hoping to catch-up with some of the guys, but due to my poor organisational skills leaving things to the last minute, everyone else had plans.
Normally I would have been a little saddened by this, but as I recently purchased Guitar Hero III on the PS3 I had the house to myself where I cranked the volume, dropped the dacks and rocked-out harder than Tom Cruise in Risky Business.
This brings me to the week and weekend just gone which is really the biggest news. Let me introduce you to George – He’s an 8-week old Maltese cross Shih Tzu puppy.
He’s the cutest little ball of fluff and since he’s still so young, we’ve been staying with him all day (both Kristy and I have worked from home a couple of days and since I effectively work by myself most of the time, I’m able to bring him to work with me).
He’s slowly getting used to going to the toilet outside (but will still require more training and patience) and over the last couple of nights he’s slept right through without waking us for a toilet break at 2am. He’s still been awake at 5am each morning, so I’ve been a bit cranky as I’m not a morning person… but, I can’t really complain too much because Kristy’s been going through the same treatment and is dealing with it a lot better than I am.
The newness of having a little puppy and not knowing what to do has had me reading every online article, forum, blog and any other source of doggy information I can find. So when you combine my lack of knowledge with an information overload, topped off with very little sleep for the last week, you end-up with me freaking-out a lot. I’ve been following George around Googling everything he does… “is he supposed to be doing that?”… “what does it mean when they do this?” etc. etc.
In a few weeks he’ll be starting Puppy Preschool which covers basic obedience training plus the opportunity for him to mingle with other puppies which is also crucial to their development and hopefully by then I will have had some sleep and settled-down a bit.
In the meantime, here are a few pics :
