Life between coffees.
I’m a regular reader of Clients From Hell so had to chuckle when I had this exchange today.
Client (irate) : “The email you set up for me isn’t working!”
Me : “Okay, are you sure you’ve been sent email?”
Client : “Yes! I’m not getting any of it.”
Me : “What are you using to check your email?”
Client “Outlook.”
Me : “Have you set up Outlook to check for mail?”
Client “No.”
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Rae’s been on holidays since Christmas but I’ve been back working since New Years, sure with a few distractions along the way but it’s been busy and I have had to spend a lot more time at the computer than I wanted to with Rae at home.
However I did take Thursday and Friday off and got to see a little more of the world than what’s outside my office window. Thanks to Zita, who looked after the kids and gave us a Christmas gift of a night away, Rae and I got to have a mini holiday. We spent it in town, staying at a nice hotel, having lunch out, going to the movies, walking through the city, going out to dinner at not only a grown up restaurant but a groovy one (Giuseppe Arnaldo & Sons where I firmly jumped back on the wagon for one night thanks to their Montenegro Muels), more walks through city and then some journeying around town the next morning. It’s not often we get to spend so much time together without one of our swarm running in with some emergency so these little ‘us times’ are very special.
Then this morning it was me and Bert time. Masters hold free workshops called ‘Build and Grow’ for kids aged 5-10 so off we went. It was great. He received his own Masters apron to wear and today he got to build a since lab. It was a nifty little kit of a couple of test tubes, a dish and some cards with experiments on them that all slotted in to a little shelf you built. The nails were a bit tricky, or stubborn, for 5 year old arms so dad had to come to the rescue (stop laughing!) but we walked away with the apron, the kit and a certificate. He’s now all pumped up for the more workshops, which they plan on holding once a month, so it looks like I know where I’ll be at least one Saturday a month for the foreseeable future.
Rae’s back at work on Monday so one day left for excursions. We’ve got breakfast planned but not much after that. Maybe the chance for one more trip before life settles back in to routine. I love these first couple of weeks of January, they’ll always be my favourite time of the year.
We were very lucky to receive a generous gift this Christmas and rather than frit it away on ‘stuff’ we decided to invest it in our house. We talked for a while and decided that given rising costs, rises that don’t look as though they will ever stop, we would buy some solar panels for our roof, so calling the roof top services one of these days too.
After some research and recommendations we decided to give Tony a call. After a chat with him we decided to get him over for a quote so I gave him our address. “You’re having me on aren’t you?” he said. It ends up his best mate of 30 years is our neighbour and his is the mystery ute I see parked out the front of the neighbour’s house ever day.
It ended up his quote was fantastic for a quality install. We’ve gone with a 3.6kW system (18 panels) that we can upgrade to 4kW (or maybe it’s 4.2 or 4.4) at a later date. This will cover almost all of energy needs based on the past 12 months of usage and reduce our electricity cost to about $25 a quarter based on the standard calculations all installers should use. As most of our install cost is covered by the gift we are lucky in that we should see a return from the part that comes from our savings fairly quickly. Once our wallet recovers we will probably go the extra few panels to cover our needs completely.
Here’s our roof as it was last Wednesday.
And here it is as it was this Wednesday.
One week from quote to installed. Now we just have to wait for the inspector next week and then it’s all up to Origin. That’s the one part of the process I’m not looking forward to.
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A bit more digging has revealed a bit more.
At the moment is seems one of two things. A cover for something that should have been on our plans but isn’t or a block that was dumped by builders. If only they had have moved it 20 cm closer to the house we never would have known it was there.
We went shopping today. Or plan was to buy a seat/day bed for the deck but they were all too expensive so we went for a stroll around Masters. On our journey we found the perfect plants for the back garden. We’ve wanted some greenery out the back for ages and these were great and within budget.
We brought them home and started digging. All was going well until I was swinging the pick for hole number 2 and whack – I hit rock. At least I thought it was rock. The more we scraped and tried to find the edge the more puzzling it became. Slowly the rock revealed itself to be a rectangle of concrete.
It’s not on any of our plans but does sit within the easement boundary. There’s no identifying marks and it only has one hook thingy. Anybody have any idea on what this may be?
So now our quick one hour planting has turned in to a major renovation of the back yard. This will be covered up before too long but before it is we’d love to know what it’s doing there.