Category: Diary

After five long months footy is back! Yep, it’s on the telly tonight and we’re all traipsing off to Telstra Dome tomorrow for the pre-season game between the Tigers and the Hawks. It’s only preseason but it’s footy and this household couldn’t be happier.

It also means that footy tipping is back and The Anthony Memorial Footy Tipping Trophy is up for grabs again. Rob will be out retain the magnificent urn he fought so hard for last year with previous winners lining up for the right to host the urn once more. Anyone is welcome to join, the less you know about footy the better. International prize winners are expected to attend the bbq to receive their prize.

All you have to do is join up at www.footytips.com.au and join the competition called ‘Tony’s Tipping’. I’ve cleared all of last years entrants to start from scratch. May the best tipper win!

There was a letter in the mail today from our real estate agent. It wasn’t registered so I knew it wasn’t anything to worry about, just a notice they want to do their annual inspection. Thankfully they didn’t nominate our wedding day and have given us enough time to get the place in order, not that much needs to be done – mainly clean out some green waste that has accumulated and we’re set to go.

We know our land lords (a brother and sister) are interested in selling, they have even asked our agent to see if we’d be interested in buying when they put it on the market (we would, but it’s out of our budget range) so one of these days we’ll be packing up and moving on. Hopefully it will be in to our own place, although Bert has put a little hold on our savings program.

We’re pretty sure the house will be torn down when it’s sold – the land is too valuable with demand for townhouses too high for it not to be. If it’s not it will need a lot of work – re-stumped, re-plumbed, rewired, extended, gardens redone – the works. It’s strange thinking we’ll most likely be the last people to live here, I wonder how many others have called these four walls home and what their memories of this place are?

It’s on again but a bit later this year. Today I saw some fencing heading up the road and over the bridge to Albert Park for the Grand Prix. I think I read somewhere that due to the Commonwealth Games they have to set up the track and the mothball it for three weeks. Guess that as I’m not driving to work this year I won’t get to see the bridge going up over Kings Way either.

Wow, I looked at my blog yesterday and realised it had been over a week since I had posted anything. That’s scary. It seems like only a day or two had passed.

We have been busy though. It’s less than two weeks now ’til I gets me a wife. We’ve been organising the day; meeting with the celebrant, finalising the movie and cinema, making sure the café we are going to remembers they are meant to be feeding us. It’s all pretty much done – and it’s been remarkably stress free. I guess we knew what we wanted to do, have ditched pretty much all the ‘wedding’ essentials that you are told make a wedding and made it the day we want. Not having to sweat over details we don’t want to sweat over sure makes life a lot easier.

Oh boy. A BBQ, couple of bottles of champagne and now Rob and I are sitting in the shade in the backyard listening to each other’s Itunes library. He’s got his mac laptop, I’ve got my Windows lappy and we’ve joined up over my wireless network. Ah, what a life.

Happy birthday my love.

There are some people who wonder why we follow football teams, say that it means nothing, that it’s just a silly game.

To those people I say take a look at the photos below (from the Tiger web site).

When it is the wish of a boy, who will the next day lose his sight in an operation to save his life, to see his favourite players, and to know this will be one of the last things he will most likely ever have the memory of seeing…well, it brought a tear to this Tiger dad’s eye. (Post operation news.)

One of the things about my dad was the way he’d drink his beer. I think I only ever saw him with a stubby or can in has hand twice, and I can’t honestly say I ever saw him drink from one – Dad only ever drank his beer from a glass. He had two glasses that he seemed to prefer, a glass stein for the afternoon beer and occasionally a long glass, both embossed with the Kiwanis symbol.

I’ve always been a straight from the stubby man myself, although Steve wouldn’t approve that I generally plonk it in a (Richmond) stubby holder, but this is beginning to change. Lately I’ve been drinking Pepsi with loads of ice in a tall glass and tonight I poured a beer in to a glass and was surprised at how much better it tasted. Almost a year since he’s gone and I’m becoming more and more like my dad; that’s something to drink to.

I don’t know how I do it but I always seem to be home on the day Americans have their Superbowl thingy. It’s on again this morning so I’ll probably have it playing in the background, no use in having the sound on ’cause the game makes absolutely no sense to me, but it’s always a spectacle. I think I was home last year when it was on and I was definitely home two years ago on the occasion of the infamous ‘wardrobe malfunction’ because that was the day after we moved in to this house (happy anniversary house!). I never would have thought as I watched Janet Jackson flash the USA that two years later I’d be permanently at home looking after my new baby boy.

And now, this from a special guest blogger, The Mysterious ‘N’.

When taking your 2 year old child to Buddy’s soft-play area, don’t leave the main play hall intent on finding the football results. What will happen is that you will notice the TV is tuned to the bloody rugby. So you will happen to notice a hi-fi sitting just outside the main play hall door. Thinking this is not being used, you will switch it from CD to Tuner and start fiddling.

Having located the right station, you will then be annoyed to find that you can’t hear it. You will then begin to turn up the volume until you reach maximum.

What will then happen is that among the many small children in the play hall, the lucky ones will die, while the rest will bleed profusely from the ears and the others will be permanently plagued by toxic-shock syndrome.

You will then realise that the hi-fi you’ve been fiddling with is the main PA for the 5000-sq-m play hall.

N