So here’s a recap of my Christmas… I hope you are sitting down and have a nice cup of coffee handy cause this could take a while.

Ok, the intro to this post was a little unfair. In all honesty, I love each and every one of the families I’m involved with and it’s always good to catch-up with everyone. It just irks me that it all gets squished into a few days of back-to-back activities.

But before I get to that, the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas were really very exciting. We went to see Arj Barker perform at the Powerhouse. As expected, he was awesomely funny, but I didn’t expect that his warm-up act would be equally as funny. So, if you hear of a guy named Joel Osborne touring (and not the one who’s an internet marketer who’s obviously used his online marketing skills to outrank the comedian of the same name), go and see him cause he’s great too. After the show, we bought a couple of Arj’s DVDs which he personally autographed for us.

The following weekend (or maybe two… I’ve lost track now) we had the Kintek Christmas Party. For those of you who don’t know, my web hosting company works closely with a number of web development firms and one that we’ve done a lot of work with over the years (and in the process become close personal friends) is a mob called Kintek.

The party was held at one of our joint clients – a wine bar called Bar Barossa. The food was great, as was the wine and their selection of international beers. After a lot of great conversation (that I’m sure became progressively more entertaining as the night went-on) Kristy and I were honoured to accept an offer from another client of mine – Chester’s Boutique Hotel in the Valley.

I’ve done a lot of stuff with the owner and helped him get a number of his sites online and in return he said that if we were ever in the area and needed a place to stay, just let him know. So the week before the party, I asked if the offer was still available and he hooked us up.

The room was awesome – in fact, the whole place is spectacular. It was once the owners personal residence that he converted into a guest house and now it’s grown to be a fully licensed boutique hotel. It’s quaint with about a dozen rooms which gives it a very warm atmosphere, but at the same time is classier than most hotels I’ve stayed at. Despite our stay only being overnight and still being in the same city that we live, it felt like we were on holidays.

That was the build-up to Christmas… this is when it starts to get hectic.

On Christmas Eve we went to Church with my folks. This year Dad was in the choir and Mum tried to encourage my brother and I to join him. We both politely declined, but Dad did a great job with the singing and I must admit, I do enjoy the Christmas Church service.

Then we grabbed some Macca’s, went home cracked a beer and opened our presents. It was pretty cool – this year I got some Skeleton Keys, Ice Invaders, some new board-shorts, Prototype for the PS3, a cooling base-station thingie for the PS3 and a computer screw-driver set in a novelty grenade casing.

We had a few more drinks, watched some Christmas stuff on TV and went to bed.

Got up early the next morning and headed over to Kristy’s Mum’s place for breakfast. Had some food, chatted, exchanged presents then it was back home to quickly make a salad and grab some wine and then head down to the Gold Coast for lunch with my family (this year it was at my sister’s new place).

Lunch was good and my family are always a very entertaining group of people to be around. Dad jokes, Tom’s new dreadlocks and the Woodford Folk Festival. After eating a little too much and the kids opened their pressies, we headed back home again. More beer.

Next day we went over to Kristy’s Auntie Sue’s place for lunch and then afterwards we caught a bus into town for Kristy’s old school friend – Bexta’s birthday which she was having at The Exchange. They had a deal where you could buy two cocktails for the price of one up until 9pm, so we built a decent stock-pile of mojito’s. Bexta had a great turn-out of people and as it so happens (and I’d like to throw-in a joke how Ipswich being a reasonably small town, it can be a little incestuous… but given Ippy’s reputation, that comment most certainly would be taken the wrong way) I went to primary-school with some of Kristy’s old friends – so it was great catching-up with everyone. Kristy has some great old school mates. Caught a maxi-taxi home with a bunch of them and ended-up drinking some more at Andrea’s place and somewhere during that time I passed-out on her couch.

Kristy woke me at about 5:30ish and we caught a cab home. Had a few hours sleep and then it was off to Kristy’s other good friends (these ones from Dancing) – Trish and Dave’s. Had lunch with them and they gave me a great little book called Twitterature – basically classic literature, as it would possibly be told today using Twitter.

Before I go too much further, I just want to point-out that this simple gift really took me by surprise because (and this may only apply to me… I’m really not sure) but generally when you receive a gift from a friend of your partners, it is most often generic. Something that they think you might like, but often turns-out wrong – like buying a bottle of bourbon for someone that drinks scotch. There’s always good intentions, but they often fail to hit the mark. For this reason, I’m always thankful and grateful for the thought, but expect that I’ll never be able to use the gifts I receive in such instances. But in this case, it was perfect.

So back to lunch – which was good (although I wished I wasn’t quite so hung-over because I’m sure the afternoon would have been more enjoyable if that were the case). I then headed back to the shopping centre bus terminal near Auntie Sue’s where we left my car the day before to go into town for Bexta’s drinkies.

Grabbed the car and then headed straight over to Caleb’s grandparent’s place for dinner. Fortunately, by this stage, I was feeling less hung-over enough to make it through the evening.

Next day it was over to Kristy’s Dad’s for a BBQ. After we ate and the kids exchanged presents, I found a nice comfy spot on the couch and fell asleep. Kristy was out the back chatting with her Dad and the kids were well engrossed with the PlayStation and their new toys, so no one really noticed and it was great to actually have a break for an hour or so.

Went home, drank some more, played some Prototype and then went to bed. Next day was our first day off since Christmas Eve. Enjoyed it by doing absolutely nothing. I think I spent most of the day sleeping in our newly air-conditioned bedroom.

The following day Con came round and we caught-up before Kristy and I had to head over to my brother’s place for dinner. I say this every time we catch-up with my family – I don’t do it enough because we always have such a great time when we’re together, but I suppose the months between visits is part of the reason it’s always so good to catch-up again.

Then the following day was New Years. Kristy had some stabbing stomach pains and despite the fact I give her a hard time, she’s a pretty tough cookie, so when she said that she might need to go to the hospital, I knew it must have been pretty bad. After a short wait in the emergency ward (read: a couple of hours) and a few tests later, they determined that Kristy may have a tiny gallstone.

They couldn’t find it when the doc did the ultrasound, but based on the results from the blood-test and the symptoms, they were convinced that was the cause of the pain. It also made sense that the pain had subsided because it only hurts when the stones move and once settled, you can go for months or even years without them bothering you again. Just in case, he subscribed some pretty hard-core pain killers and suggested Kristy gets a proper stomach x-ray.

Despite feeling a lot better, Kristy wasn’t up to a big night, so Con came around and we spent the night catching-up, talking a lot of shit and drinking a lot. By the time mid-night rolled around, Con decided it was time for his proverbial drunken phone calls and for the first time ever it was fun to be on the sending end and not the receiving. Other highlights of the night included us trying to climb one of the trees in my backyard. Not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Fortunately, we were too drunk to get anywhere (despite crafting a primitive pulley out of a rope that Caleb plays, and sometimes swings from the tree with).

So overall, was a quiet night with my closest and best friend filled with ample amounts of beer, moving onto lots of nice scotch, some PS3, failed tree climbing incidents and most likely a hefty phone bill. Which, in my books equates a pretty good way to see-in 2010.

Two days later it was back to work. While I wasn’t looking forward to working again, the backlog of Christmas / New Years work seemed like a quiet walk in the park when compared to the explosion of family and festivities over the previous week.

Since being back at work I’ve set a bunch of goals which include reading more, blogging more regularly (well, the blogging I meant when the goal was set related to work blogs, but if I’m work blogging more, I’ll inevitably blog more personally too) and generally doing more social media stuff.

To help the whole motivational process, I’ve decided to jump onboard with a photo blogging experiment called the 365 project where I have to take a photo every day for a year and upload it… so here goes…

So, that was my Christmas / New Years… how was yours?

Two of these things just happen to be gaming (of the computer or console variety) and trivia… and over the last couple of months, I’ve done a bit of both of these things.

A few weeks back, my folks retirement lifestyle village held their annual trivia night, so Kristy and I joined my brother Brett, his wife Lyndal and my Mum and Dad for a night of tricky questions. Last year our team was a little bigger and we came in second place, although there was only one point separating us from the winners and we later discovered that one of the questions was marked incorrectly, so technically we should have won… but this year, we didn’t do quite so well and came-in third place.

I am not brilliant at common knowledge stuff… I tend to say and do a lot of stupid things… my interests are centred around fairly niche topics (like computers, anything geeky, movies, music and comics) and you’re probably thinking “music” or “movies” is fairly broad, although the songs and flicks I find that I know most about usually fall slightly outside the mainstream stuff. But this all tends to be the stuff that makes for good trivia questions.

I also find myself able to pull answers out of my arse on things that I really shouldn’t know anything about – say, books for example – as I never read (unless it’s a blog or something online) I shouldn’t know the first thing about authors or best sellers etc. but strangely I was giving names of Bronte sisters and answering questions as to which ones were responsible for writing some of their classics. How do I know this? F*cked if I know… but I do. And it’s because of that, that I quite like trivia nights.

More recently we’ve had a nightmare few weeks with random, intermittent server issues which only seemed to affect a handful of select sites and even when those sites were being affected, the server loads and specs showed no signs of any problems – yet the sites were running slower than my grandmother on a treadmill. It took a solid couple of weeks of re-installing and upgrading server-side components, libraries, tweaking configuration variables and we finally discovered that due to a PHP update there were a couple of bugs and any sites using certain functions could have issues.

So, inbetween the issues, when the server was operational, I’d try and escape from life and forget about all the dramas via my PS3.

I played through Batman Arkham Asylum (which was really really fun), Assassin’s Creed (because I hadn’t played it yet, but Assassin’s Creed 2 looks pretty good and I wanted to get up-to-speed) and Infamous (which I’m still playing… much to Kristy’s dismay as I’ve been playing it a lot).

I was previously quite disappointed by current gaming trends as I’d be able to get through most games in a few days – and that’s saying something as I’m not a brilliant gamer, but I was pleasantly surprised that most of these games kept me interested for at least a week or two. Batman took a bit longer than usual cause I kept searching for all the extra hidden riddles and trying to complete every little task… and Infamous will require two complete play-throughs (one as a good guy and one as a bad guy) which will take a while because as it is, I’m only half-way through the game as a goodie.

Other than that, the only other thing worth reporting is that Skye and Scotty have joined our local gym and they’ve been trying to get me to go again. I went last Monday and it killed me. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs for 24 – 48 hours directly after the workout and I think I should have been happy about this because the 3 days that followed were agonising as my poor little (and I do mean little) muscles repaired themselves. And now they want me to go again tonight. I’m not keen, but I probably should.

So if you don’t see another blog post for a few weeks it could be because I feel like my arms have been pulled out of their sockets by Arnold Schwarzenegger thanks to my local gym… or work may have gotten in the way… but I’m really hoping to get back on top of things over the next few days.

So it’s been a week of surprises – my weekend in the mountains (without mobile phone or internet coverage) was really good. My sister, Karen introduced us to a game where you take a random object and pretend it’s something else. For instance, you take a shoe, hold it up to your ear and everyone has to guess that you’re pretending it’s a phone. Although simple, the game actually gets rather interesting once all the obvious scenarios are done.

Karen explained to us that the game was introduced as a study to identify how lateral a child’s mind is and to some extent, gain an indication of their overall quick-wittedness and intelligence. Sort-of like a word association game, but instead with objects. All I can say is that my family (and myself included) are rather inventive, quite funny but I’m not so sure about intellectual

Then on Monday night I did my first-ever public speaking gig which also, surprisingly, went really really well. I’d go as far as to say that it went so well that I’d happily do it again. If you’re interested in reading some of the geeky SEO things discussed, you can check it out at my work blog.

Then in other news this-morning I hear that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are both dead… not related and their deaths don’t really have any impact at all on me personally – sure I liked some of Jacko’s music and think his title of ‘King of Pop’ is justified considering his career… although he also is the King of Crazy amongst other things, but I won’t go into that and I’ll avoid making any jokes [for now] as I think that anyone who passes deserves at least a little respect for them and their loved ones (yes, even the crazy ones).

So in honour of his death, here’s a homage to MJ via Darth Vader:

While we’re on the topic of music (how was that for a segway?) PlayStation have just launched a new, free, music video service VidZone which looks pretty cool. Now if you’re as geeky as I am, you’re probably thinking that since PS3 has a web browser and supports media servers, why would you need a dedicated music service when there’s YouTube and other streaming options via your PC? Well, I agree, it isn’t necessary, but from a quick play lastnight the quality seems good and it’s easy to use, so it ticks all the right boxes… and I imagine that it’s targeted to people who probably don’t use their PS3s to stream YouTube so with that in mind, it looks like a good little service.

Last thing related to music… the following clip was sent to me via a Twitter buddy and I have to say I really like the song and the filmclip is awesome:

Moving away from music and onto photos… This is photo bomb – a website devoted to the delicate art of inserting ones self (or finding someone or something distracting) into other’s seemingly legitimate photos. Or if you’ve got family snaps like those found on this next site, you don’t even need photobombing: Awkward Family Photos.

And finally, last photo-related thing, I stumbled across a project started by Ze Frank called Youngme / Nowme. The site is dedicated to replicating old photos, so you get a photo of you riding your first bike, or sitting on the potty or something typical of kids, and then you try and replicate that photo by wearing a similar outfit and get a snap of you trying to ride a kids bike… it sounds a bit silly, but I love the concept and some of the photos are pretty funny.

Do you like coffee and robots? I certainly do, so if you’re like me, then check-out this super terrific Japanese coffee making robot thing (I think that’s the correct term for it if my translation skills are accurate):

And last, but certainly not least – I like obscure comics / cartoons and years and years ago I was a big fan of the short-lived series The Maxx. Much to my delight, I just found you can watch full episodes of the show at MTV’s Maxx website.

That’s it from me peoples – have a good weekend if I don’t post anything beforehand!

Although not technically for my birthday, I had a really great weekend – we went to the Game On Exhibition – An action-packed celebration of videogames culture tracking the development from the earliest computer games to arcade-era hits and the very latest from today’s billion-dollar industry. With more than 100 playable games, as well as rarely seen consoles, controllers and collectables, it was a showcase of games history like no other. I was in heaven!

On Sunday I caught-up with a couple of search marketing guys who I met at a conference last year. It was good to share a few beers and have someone to talk to about geeky search stuff (the stuff that would put most people to sleep)… and on the topic of search marketing, I owe a HUGE thank you to everyone who got behind me and voted on my T-Shirt design for the Search Engine College competition. If you have no idea on what I’m talking about, check-out the build-up to it here.

I have to say I was honestly amazed at how far word spread and the number of people that voted. I had family, friends, the families and friends of friends, it was promoted via Facebook, on Twitter… emails were flying around from people I haven’t seen in years saying ‘nice design’… it was quite literally incredible and I honestly had trouble believing how many people voted.

What’s better yet – I won!!! So that was a nice little birthday present. The prize is some search training material, a ticket to an expensive search conference in Sydney later this year and the proud honour of knowing I’m responsible for the T-Shirt used to promote the Search Engine College for 2009.

Due to my general lack of organisation, the fact that there has been a lot happening this month I didn’t quite get around to arranging a birthday party for me… but all is not lost – in the next few weeks I’m going to have a geeky celebration like no other. The theme of the party will be Internet phenomena – those people and events that have gained famed and notoriety as a direct result of the Internet. Some are tragic, some are incredibly funny and most are just plain wrong. It should be a fun night – I might even advertise it on MySpace

So that’s it for me… I’m off to the movies to see The Wrestler.

A couple of weeks ago my car mysteriously wouldn’t start. Kristy gave me a jump start, I took the car for a long drive to recharge the battery and all seemed good again… for a week. Then over the weekend I didn’t drive around much only to discover my car wouldn’t start again on the Sunday. So later that evening, we did the jump-start thing again, I drove around for a couple of hours and all was good again… until this weekend. I sensed a pattern. So my car’s battery could hold a charge for about 24 hours, but if left undriven any longer, it’d die.

To indicate how much I know about the mechanics of a vehicle, it dawned on me this-morning that car batteries usually have water in them, so I open the little screw things on top of the battery to discover it’s as dry as Victoria… when really it should have been as wet as Cairns.

After consulting with my friend and business partner Glen (who knows considerably more about cars than I do) he informs me that since it’s been dry for this long, the batter is most likely screwed, so until I get the time to get the car into a mechanic to replace the battery, it looks like my daily tasks will now be – recharge phone, recharge laptop, recharge mp3 player, recharge car…

I don’t know if there was anything particularly exciting that was happening 9 months ago, or if it was just a really boring month, but there seems to be a lot of birthday’s around the month of February (mine being one of them).

Over the weekend I helped celebrate two of them – my Mum’s and Vicky’s (and sorta my sister-in-law Lyndal’s too as hers was only a week ago). For Vicky’s birthday, she had a small group of family and friends over for a BBQ. As things were quietening down, we decided to head-home, but put the offer-out to anyone if they wanted to come back to ours for a few evening drinks. Skye and Scotty accepted.

Other than the drinking, the highlight of the evening was their sushi machine that they bought along to demonstrate. It basically looks like a slightly larger version of a bike pump. You open the cylinder and line the sides with rice and then place your chosen ingredients down the middle. Seal it up, which makes the rice form a nice tube while compacting it all together… then you take the bike-pump handle and squeeze the rice log onto your seaweed… roll it up and slice. Presto – a perfect sushi roll without having to stuff around with bamboo mats and getting rice stuck everywhere.

What makes the experience even more fun is when you try and do this after a few drinks.

While we were drinking and making sushi, Caleb was at a sleepover birthday party at one of his friend’s places. When Kristy picked him up in the morning, he had done me proud… it was a games night, so he and a few of the lads made it their business to stay-up all night playing computer games.

At breakfast, Caleb was adamant he wasn’t tired as he kept drifting-off between each bite of his eggs.

After breaky, I went into the city to help my Mum celebrate her birthday. My folks headed into South Bank to have a ride on the newish Ferris Wheel. Not sure if it has a proper title, but it’s sorta been dubbed the Brisbane Eye… and like Brisbane, it’s not very big – but like they say, it’s not the size of your Ferris wheel that matters it’s the size of your… um… not sure how that should finish, but I think I should stop now before I take my Mum’s birthday from the Ferris wheel to the gutter.

After the ride, we all (as in my siblings) met up with Mum and Dad for a buffet lunch at the Casino. Only place where you can get a nice smorgasbord with all you can eat at a fairly reasonable price and then finish the meal off with a game of blackjack.

So that was my weekend… next weekend is valentine’s day and to quote something geeky I saw online:

Ladies love techie romantics… cause we give ‘em what they like. E-cards, E-mails and public forum posts saying ‘I lubb U Baby, XOXO, @}–,— x 12′

Then a couple of days later it’s my birthday… and Glen’s, then Caleb’s birthday which also coincides with my nieces and probably a whole bunch more that my sieve-like mind can’t think of right now.

It’s a good thing I did as I had a couple of unexpected (and a couple of expected) visitors over the weekend.

My sister (Karen) who has been living over in New Zealand for the last couple of years has just moved back as her husband scored a job at a school at the Gold Coast. I believe they’ve been thinking of moving back for a little-while, but the timing was never quite right until now. Over the last week they’ve been house-hunting, purchasing a car and everything else that comes with an international move. On the weekend my folks were helping-out with the babysitting Karen and Ged’s daughter Caitlin and Dad thought she might like to come-over and meet George.

George loves all kids… scratch that, he just loves any attention he gets, and Caitlin is an adorable little thing so it was quite fun watching them play.

As they were heading-off my old work-buddy Cameron popped over. With the Christmas rush, I haven’t caught-up with him in ages, so it was good to have a chat. He’s been managing the IT services of a local car yard and gets to ‘borrow’ cars from the lot. On this occasion he had a new Subaru Impreza WRX and when we went for a drive – that thing is an absolute beast!

When I told Kristy I wanted one, she pointed-out that if I had one, I’d lose my license within a week and if I didn’t it’d only take another week or two before it was written-off. And I couldn’t argue with that.

On Sunday my brother and sister-in-law (Brett & Lyndal) came over for lunch. We saw them at Christmas, but as they were the hosts for last-years family Christmas get-together (that consisted of 25 people), we only really had a brief time to catch-up with them as there was so much happening, so it was good to have a proper catch-up.

I’m not sure how the topic came-up, but we started talking about Nintendo Wii’s. As Lyndal is a yoga instructor, she was interested in the yoga component of the Wii Fit, so we pulled ours out and had a play. Needless to say she was pretty impressed and is now looking into getting one.

After they left, Kristy and I spent the afternoon playing Wii Fit. By the end of it I was buggered and had discovered a few things – I have even worse ballance than I originally thought and when doing the hula-hoop exercise, I look a bit like Mr. Bean dancing.

Sunday night Kristy and I went out for dinner and as we felt like a good steak we decided to head to The Oxley Hotel aka The Ox. While it’s certainly not gormet dining, their steaks are good, the decor is nice, the staff and service are really friendly and the place has a good atmosphere.

Came home and watched another movie, dicked around on the net and went to bed. Overall, a great weekend of catch-ups, movies, Wii and steak… mmm steak.

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.

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.

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.

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!