Category: Diary

Let the picture below, spotted by Rae, be a lesson to protestors around the world.

When you have your photo taken make sure you don’t end up appearing to send a message directly opposed to the one you intended to send.

Some more news on the house front. Wonderful Wife Rae set a little rocket up Henley with an email over the weekend that resulted in a call from the area manager yesterday. The upshot is we have a slim chance of getting the house before Christmas, which of course means the balance of probabilities lies with getting it after, but from the dates mentioned we will definitely be out of here by the end of our lease at the end of January.

Now we start the clearing of junk and packing up planning in earnest, already large amounts of clothes are finding their way on to Freecycle and we are revisiting the garage sale idea to clear out more ‘stuff’. Once we have a firm date (hopefully in a few weeks) we’ll know if the boxes have to start being packed straight away or if they can wait until after Christmas. Either way it’s going to be a busy Christmas/New Year holiday for us.

Last night we drew up a list of things we need/would like to add to the house and so far, in no particular order, we have come up with :

• Flyscreens for the front and rear doors (why oh why didn’t we just include them in construction)
• A deck for the back
• Shutters for the two west facing windows
• Automatic door for the garage
• A dishwasher
• Cat door
• Antenna

Some we’ll have to do straight away, some are high priority and some, well, I’ll probably be blogging in ten years time about needing them to be done.

It turned out to be a kitchen day today. First off was spying some day old tortillas on the bench just before lunch. Hmmm. A bit of tomato paste, some mozzarella and some parmesan, couple of minutes in the oven and it’s happy kids munching away on Tony’s Tortilla Cheese Pizza.

In the afternoon I baked a banana cake that was promptly demolished by everyone for afternoon tea, although I’ve learned my lesson and I saved a piece for Rae. Then there was the loaf of bread that’s almost done baking and finally a new recipe for Not Fried Rice, which, along with the banana cake, came from this week’s Planning Queens Menu Plan Monday.

That’s three more to add to the roster.

A couple of weeks ago we needed new garbage bags for the kitchen bin (rivetting stuff, I know). So Rae picked up some Glad Wave Top Tie bags. Fair enough, Glad is a good solid brand, they should have no problems holding the rubbish. Or so you’d think. Each and every bag we have used has split and the wave tops tear off with the slightest tug. As the garbage spilled across the kitchen floor (again) this morning I’d had enough so I did what anyone would do, and jumped on their web site to complain.

Okay, there’s the contact form, a drop down for complaints, fill out, press submit. A couple of minutes later the standard ‘thanks for contacting us’ email appeared in my inbox. So far so good. Then another email arrived.

It appears that complaints are meant to be emailed to vicky@tribalddb.com.au who works for Tribal DBB in Sydney (and let’s just ignore the fact that complaints for a major company go to a software developer at their advertising agency) but Vicky’s server is rejecting any incoming email so complaints just disappear in to the internet ether. Way to go Glad. I think Tribal DDB also fail in their goal “to develop truly unique and effective communication solutions”. Ignoring loyal customers may be unique, effective however…

We got to have a look inside the house today and things are progressing, at a glacial speed, but progressing none the less.

All the painting is done so we are hoping the tiling should start this week, then it’s final fit out. They have gone as far as drilling holes in the ceiling for the lights to be connected and all of the doors have holes ready for door handles but there’s still a few major things outstanding like showers, baths, garage doors and the roof needs a little attention.

It’s at the stage now we just want out of this place, it’s time has well and truly passed and we want our new home. They have 11 weeks until the contract says they have to finish and we think they’ll probably use every one of them. Sigh.

Today’s baking was scones. They are my second attempt and didn’t rise as well as the first lot but they are crunchy on top and light and fluffy on the inside so no one had better complain!

Tonight I cooked a recipe from The Planning Queen’s menu plan for this week. It was a dead simple pasta with chicken and spinach (download her recipe) and everybody loved it, with the twins coming back for thirds.

This one goes on to dinner rotation.

On our walk to the PO Box today I noticed something had gone and I’m kicking myself for not taking photos before it did. Recently there was a massive change of bus routes and one which runs nearby had it’s route changed to take it out of a narrow shopping strip. This is a good thing but it meant that the pebble mix bus stop at the end of the street was no longer needed and now it’s gone. Piece by piece the history of this wonderful suburb is disappearing and if it wasn’t for Google Earth I wouldn’t be able to show you what it once looked like.

I love my wife. Not just because she’s beautiful, smart, funny and a wonderful mum. I love my wife because today she bought me a copy of the latest Melway. She knows the way to my heart is best found with a map.