Category: Diary

Five months and four days later we’re still motoring along with the house improvements. This weekend was great. We had Andrew The Wonder Deck Builder come back and do some more work. We now have a bench in the laundry which will make a huge difference, we’ll probably add a couple of shelves above it at some stage but now a lot of the little bits of junk that find their home on the floor will have a place to live.

He also did some major work in the theatre. All of our speaker wires are now running through the roof and down the walls. He had tiles off, ladders up and was hacking away at our walls and the result is magnificent. No more wires trailing along the skirting boards or draped over the door way. It’s now tidy little bits of wire coming out of wall plates.  Add a new antenna point in the kids area and the updates were complete

Next up is the front yard. As I’ve mentioned previously it’s a bit of an embarrassment but recently brother in law Dale, who works for a landscaper and is a dab hand at creating gardens himself, was down and drew up a plan that we loved. He’s just emailed through a list of things we need so this week we’ll be pricing, organising and getting things rolling.

Oh, and for those following the saga of our non-existent side fence you won’t be surprised there’s been another development. The guy who quoted hadn’t turned up so I called him this week. At least I tried to call him – his phone had been disconnected. Sigh. The neighbour is now going to follow it up as it was his brother who sent the fencer over. One day we’ll have that fence, one day.

A year ago I took this photo of our street. Four houses under construction, one block about to be built on.

I took the same shot today.

Every house built and lived in and one remaining block is underway.

Daniel recently wrote about problems with predictive text on his Nokia phone. I have similar issues with my LG , I assume they use the same predictive technology, but I have one prediction that bugs me more than others. Whenever I try to type ‘at’ it replaces it with ‘28’. Who on earth would need to enter 28 more often than they enter at?

I love working from home. One of the benefits is having things delivered and not having to track them down later at a post office or depot in the middle of nowhere (hello good citizens of Laverton). So far this week I’ve signed for a replacement laser cartridge from Office works, two registered letters for Rae, the groceries and my new Adobe CS4 software and every time the kids have stood in the door and yelled ‘bye!’ to bemused delivery guys.

<

All rugged up for a trip to the park.

A while ago I ruminated on how buying a new espresso machine actually saved me money. Okay, so it was more justifying the purchase to myself but it still had me wondering up until today just how much I was saving so I got out the calculator, measuring jug and scales and figured it out.

7 grams of coffee = 14 cents
190 ml of milk = 23 cents
Power & water, hard to say ’cause it’s so small but let’s 5 cents.

That’s a grand total of (…and carry the two) 42 cents per coffee.

Instead of $3.70 for a standard coffee up the street.

Wow. Even with staff and other overheads it shows just how much profit there is in that little bean.

Another Sunday morning, another weekend Sports supplement explaining how the Tigers were defeated once more. 1 win from nine games. After the debacle that was our first game I checked the record and my prediction was one one win from 12 games. It looks like I’m dead on target.

I’ve been a Richmond supporter all my life and a member for the past eight years. I’m accustomed to defeat but 2009 is different. I’m getting no joy at all from the footy this year; I didn’t got to Dreamtime at the G last night and I’m yet to renew Bert’s and Kennedy’s memberships. We Tiger supports are a hardy lot, it’s a badge of honour that we turn up every week regardless of how the team is going, but of late that badge has become rather rusty.

Terry’s time is up, anyone can see that. If he’s not asked to step aside in the promised mid-year review then there is something seriously wrong with the management at the club. This is the team as he made it and it’s obvious something is drastically wrong. Give someone a few games to try something new, start some more young kids, we have nothing to loose. I feel sorry for Wallace, it must be hard turning up to work every day knowing you are just warming the seat but his time has come, and gone.

We’re away next weekend for another loss in West Australia and then it’s the Bulldogs. There’s a certain appeal, and symmetry, to having his last match as Tiger coach being against the Doggies so let that be his farewell. Please.

Woke up in the middle of the night unable to move. Yet again I’d managed to throw my back/shoulder our and the simple act of raising my left arm almost reduced me to tears. Eventually I managed to find a position where I could doze until the alarm went off. Rae must have noticed me flopping around like a wounded seal as I tried to roll over, or maybe it was my moaning about how much my bloody arm hurt and how impossible it was going to be for me to do anything today. Either way she sprang in to action.

Out came the liniment, out came her shoulders, thumbs, elbow.

I apologise to any neighbours who may have heard the yells coming from our bedroom this morning. There was nothing going on except my lovely gentle wife inflicting huge amounts of pain on my shoulder blade. I think at one stage I almost kicked her as my leg involuntarily flung up.

Thing is, it worked. I can move my arm now; the pain has shrunk back in to a tiny little ache. I’ve been told there will be more tonight so I’ll spend most of today psyching myself up for it. I may also spend some time looking at exercises I can do whilst sitting at my desk and researching ways to improve my posture. Anything would have to be better than seeing that little glint in Rae’s eyes as she moves in for the kill.

What a great day. It started off in the most magnificent way when Helen and Dale, who stayed last night, returned a favour and sat the tribe while Rae and I went out for breakfast. Together. By ourselves. With no kids. Alone. Just the two of us. We headed off to Le Chien in Seddon and plonked ourselves down in the window with The Age, coffee, tea and a carefree feeling that was a wonder to behold.

After our morning of being normal people we headed back to the kids to find our washing had been done and hung out and our floors mopped.  The Jankes left, Zita turned up for some tech support and a great lunch, Rob came over for a coffee that ended up with both of them staying for a yummy dinner and a couple of drinks.  The young ones are in bed, the elder two are being quiet and Rae and I are sitting here typing away but no doubt both having a good ole think about some majorly good news we heard today (No! It’s nothing to do with us.).

And that is how every Sunday should be.

When we were looking at plans for our house there where a couple of non-negotiables, with the firmest being Rae and I needed a theatre room. We love our movies and with four thousand kids it’s not like we can just nip on out to The Sun or Astor to catch a film whenever we’d like.

Thankfully the plan we found had a space that suited us perfectly. We added doors, had a blackout curtian put on the window and will shortly have the speaker cables run through the walls. I’ve added a media PC so we can wirelessly watch any file I have on my main PC, put up our movie posters and my prized Dolby Digital plaque. We still need to get some more shelving for the DVD collection that refuses to stop growing, even though our ability to pay for it has well and truly declined.

We’ve now set aside either Friday or Saturday night as a movie night. Last week Ren dropped in to Cinema Malloy and watched Wall Street with us. Last night it was just the two of us and Fatal Attraction. We’re thinking of having a mini Michael Douglas festival and continuing with either Romancing the Stone or Falling Down. We could, alternatively fork in to Adrian Lyne territory and try Flash Dance followed by 9 1/2 Weeks before going down the Mickey Rourke path that could include Sin City and The Wrestler. Tough decisions to make.

I’m also thinking of trying Quickflix, the Aussie version of Netflix. If you’ve tried it I’d love to hear what you think. We have enough DVDs here to keep us going for almost a decade but there’s something that’s appealing about having movies mailed to me. We could keep our list of movies we missed but would like to see on Quickflix and slowly work our way through them.

Another thing we wanted when we were building the house was to have people come and stay, and today my sister and husband are in town. This means Cinema Malloy may not be open tonight, or hopefully, if it is it will be a full house. Who could ask for more?