Category: Diary

Saturday 4th October, 2008 was one of those days that contained both the best that life can offer and the worse it could possibly dish up.

First, the worst. It came in an SMS message from Daniel. One of my dearest friends, the wonderful Miss Marita, had lost her sister in a car accident on Friday. Just 29 years old, Rose died on her way to lunch with friends. I called Marita but there just aren’t any words for these times that can truly convey how you feel. We  are all thinking of you Marita, and your family.

That afternoon after the clouds of the morning had drifted away we were celebrating the wedding of one of Rae’s dearest friends, Enaksha, in the brilliant Spring afternoon sunshine. Knack and Johnathen were married at the Abbotsford Convent and it was a glorious afternoon to be standing in the gardens. We even got to dress up (I wore a tie for the first time in seven months) and have a great evening at the reception. I know the bride is the focus of any wedding but I think I took more photos of my beautiful wife than Knack. While Richard shouldn’t be worried I was more than happy with some of my wedding snaps.

 

And here’s one of the two of us all dolled up, snapped by mum.

It’s beginning to actually look like a house now.

The push is on, grass roots democracy is beginning to stir – join the push to make Grand Final eve a public holiday at the rather appropriately named  Make Grand Final Eve A Public Holiday Facebook Group.

It may be a little too late for this year, what with it being 9:30pm on Grand Final eve, but I’m sure we can do it by next year.

Qantas’ newest jet, the A380 arrived in Melbourne today.

I’m half the man I use to be. Well that’s a bit of an exaggeration when, really, its more like I’m closer to 90% of the man I was six months ago.

When I left work for long service leave one of my aims was to get fitter. I was overweight and had been told by my doctor that I really had to do something. He has been telling me this for years mind you, all the time with me ignoring him and slowly growing larger. A big part of the problem was my job – 8 hours a day behind a computer, then more at home in the evening. I was also lucky in a way that I had lunch supplied for free, but unlucky in that the selections were far from health conscious.

So when I started at home I made a decision that I had to stop fooling myself, that my lifestyle and diet were bad for me and that I had to make changes. Over the past six months the unhealthy lunches have gone, I’ve given up my one Pepsi a day (I’ve only had two in the past six months), reduced my coffee intake to one a day, the only beer I have is at the footy, just one glass of red a week, cut back on the sweets at night, opted for smaller servings and tried to have a couple of walks a week with the kids. Basically I stopped kidding myself that all the little things didn’t really matter.

And it has worked.

The highest I can remember was weighing in at 104kg. I was generally around 102ish. This past week I hit, and have maintained, my first aim of getting below 90kg. My next aim is to get to and keep below 85. I haven’t felt this good in years, the weight loss has had a real, positive, effect on an assortment of minor complaints and inconveniences, which surprisingly is exactly what the doctor said would happen.

The most noticeable outward sign is my clothing. I now look like a clown in my old jeans. I’ve dropped two jean sizes and really need to get another pair. I’ve also reached the last hole on my old faithful belt so that’s going to have to go too. Losing weight may be good for your health, but it’s murder on your wallet.

Rae came across this gardening hazard this afternoon.

Today is my last official day as an employee of Cabrini Health, my notice is effective as of tomorrow. My VPN access was shut off on Friday and I assume my security swipes will no longer get me in to the staff car park. I was talking to mum and she asked me if I missed the place and without hesitation I said ‘No, not at all.’. I miss the people but the time had come.

We went to the drive-in last night. It was such a perfect day and such a mild evening we bundled the pyjama clad young ones in to the car (Phee was staying at a friends) and headed for the wilds of Coburg. Despite the fact the terrible two refused to sleep (Missy Moo was awake as the final credits rolled) and we spent most of the evening walking up and down behind the car trying to lull them to sleep it was a wonderful night. We’ve promised Bert that next time it will be a kid’s film.

It probably won’t make the news but there was a train crash near by this afternoon.

And my monitor is now in the pink. I was working this morning when all of a sudden the white background flicked over to a rather fetching shade of pink. No manner of twiddling or resetting has worked in getting it back to how it should be so I may be dragging out the old monitor to make do for a while.

It had to happen and now it finally has. We can no longer get in to our house, yeah! We’ve reached lock up stage so when we went out this morning it was strictly peering through windows as the back door was locked and there was no way we could convince the locksmith Dupont Circle people, the laundry door is in place and the two temporary doors on the garage entrance and main door are firmly secured. The actual front door is leaning up against the dining room wall and all of the power points have been punched out of the plaster.

Luckily we’ve been out every week checking on progress and we’ve picked up one major problem – they put a small shower in the ensuite when we went with the larger option – that would have caused major hassles later. Now we’re going to have to make appointments to check the property and ensure we are getting what we have paid for.

We’ve also caught them up on an attempt to get us to pay the major lock up component of the builders fee early. We received the invoice last week but when you’re missing about 10% of your front wall (it’s cladding instead of brick for bit of visual interest) you’re entitled to ask if it really is at lock up stage. So we asked. Ten minutes later we received an email telling us to ignore the invoice and that we’d get another when the cladding was done. Either a supervisor was pushing to ensure he met his targets and hoping we wouldn’t notice or someone ticked the wrong screen. Either way it gives us at least another week before we have to start paying more.

An early morning visitor came sailing silently overhead this morning.