Category: Diary

Normally I work alone, or with Bella sleeping at my feet as my only companion. Thanks to the teacher’s strike here in Victoria I have an officemate. Bert is keeping me company today while his teacher joins tens of thousands of others in the city. He’s been very busy this past hour peppering me with questions for his work – writing pizza restaurant menus. So if any of my clients suddenly find references to Meat Lovers or Vegetarian popping up in odd places this would be why.

Working for yourself you don’t get many perks but being able to be flexible with your time, within reason, is one of them. Today Rae came home early. I picked her up from the station and as she had a little time before her appointment I suggested lunch out.

Smart woman that she is, she said ‘sure’.

We popped on over to the local Sunshine Golf Club (which is in Derrimut). We got to sit on the balcony, look at the views over the course to the city and a have a chat while enjoying a great (and inexpensive) lunch. Half an hour later back to work and Rae is off but it left me smiling.

A couple of years ago the house next door sold. They moved in, ripped up the front yard and replaced it with concrete and…well, that’s about it. We never heard or caught site of them and save for a light being on around the clock for a year or so they may as well have not been there. Some would say the perfect neighbours.

I’ve just arrived home from a client meeting to see a For Sale sign on their (overgrown) strip of lawn that survived the concrete. Bugger. Silent neighbours are good neighbours. Now the wait for who moves in next begins. My only concern is that the concrete apron out the front will be attractive to people with lots of cars, and the experience of living with cars parked just meters from our bed is not one we’d like to go through again.

The Neighbour lottery, cross your fingers we win.

Today Henry got to go shopping with Nana Lois and choose his birthday present. Of course he chose Lego – a really cool Lego boat.

He then came home and built it all by himself. No assistance at all. He counted off the bumps to make sure he had the right blocks and they were in the right place and displayed great patience to make sure it was perfect.

Today my little man turns 7.

Happy birthday Bertie Boy.

The whole gym thing is going well. I’m happy with how much better I’m feeling, my trainer is happy with where I’m at and a few people have been kind enough to say they’ve noticed a difference. Even though this is now just a standard part of the daily routine, and will be from now on, it helps to keep things a little fresh so I’ve decided to commit myself to doing something I never thought I would.

I’m going to run.

I’ve decided to do the C25K program – that’s Couch to 5 kilometres. It’s a measured build up to get non-runners (eg me) from doing nothing but couch sitting to running 5k in three months. Of course I’ve found a way to incorporate geek in to the process. I’ve downloaded C25K Pro and will have that on my phone as I run it out on the treadmill. It’s mid August so lets see if I can reach my goal by mid November.

For years now I’ve had Weetbix for breakfast. It’s been so long I can’t remember what I ate before that. Maybe it was toast. Hmm, maybe Corn Flakes. Any way. On a recent trip to Sydney I went all out for breakfast in my room and part of that was ordering some muesli.

Now those who know me will know what a big deal that is (truly!). Eating breakfast that contains fruit is almost inconceivable. But eat it I did. Then a couple of weeks later in hospital I ordered muesli again. And I liked it. And I then I bought some to have at home. And then I tried a different brand to see what other muesli was like and now I’m trying another.

The odd thing is that the day after I started eating it at home an email dropped in to my business inbox. It was a lovely mail from someone who had been recommended by an existing client. She, obviously, was after a web site for her business and that business is selling organic muesli.

Recently I was helping a mate whose client had had their web site hacked. I pointed out that using a host who only charges $80p/a for hosting (and makes claims about how cheap they are in their own name) probably wasn’t a great idea if they wanted to make sure their site was secure. He went back to them and suggested a new host to stop it happening again.

“Oh no, that’s way too expensive for our web site.” they said.

Guess what.

Two weeks later their super cheap host has been hacked again and their website is down again.

The company is all about maximising their customer’s wealth. Seems they have a little to learn about the difference between cost and value.

Here’s my boy. Happy but tired.

This morning we went to the shops with one purpose in mind – to pick up a new pair of slippers for me.

So can someone please explain how on earth I’ve come home with a pair of slippers, two pair of runners, a food processor, two coffees and a Club Penguin membership?