Anthony Malloy

How great was that, we got to go on a date!

Thanks to Zita baby sitting I actually got to go out to dinner and a movie with my wife, just my wife, no kids. Those who have grown up kids or lots of babysitters on tap may wonder what the fuss is about but to us a night together alone is more valuable than gold. We got to have proper grown up food (no fries!), proper grown up conversation, a stroll along the street and then to watch a film that didn’t feature talking frogs. Mind you Animal Kingdom isn’t what you’d call a date movie, at least not in our books, but it was a sensational film.

Best part of the night was the fog covering the freeway on the way home. It brought back memories of nights long ago, driving out in the cold and fog,  trying to remember which was the Deer Park exit so I wouldn’t miss my date with this amazing girl I’d just met.

Funny how things come full circle.

The most amusing postcard has just turned up in the mail. It’s from V/Line (the state’s country rail operator) and they are offering us the chance to win ‘a family trip to Melbourne’.

Just where do they think we are? Derrimut is approximately 20k from the city as the crow flies – I can see the lights on the Eureka tower from our driveway. I bet they’re not letterboxing Oakleigh!

While working from home has its many benefits, such as always being here for post or Officeworks deliveries and being able to get to work with a broken arm, it has a few draw backs. Today is a non-nanny day and I was doing some admin stuff at the kitchen table. I realised they were being really good, quietly playing away and giggling. Cool, I thought, I can make a quick call to a client from here with no worries.

As soon as poor Linda answered Bert shoved Henry, Henry landed in the toy box and started shrieking at the top of his considerable lungs and Moo ran over yelling ‘who is on the phone Dadda?’. Lesson learned.

I was shopping with my mum the other day, she was helping with the shopping thanks to me and my broken arm. Mum was taking some shopping back to the car and I had the three kids in tow. As a treat I thought I’d buy them a finger bun from Bakers Delight and being a little incapacitated I asked the lady if she could kindly cut it in to three for me.

“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to.” I was so dumfounded I had to ask her to repeat it. She was genuinely apologetic, but she was not allowed to cut anything.

Seriously Bakers Delight – you’re a bakery! You let your staff put bread through the slicing machine, why on earth can’t you trust them to pick up a knife and slice something? I’m absolutely bamboozled as to what the rationale behind this edict could be. It can’t be because the knife is sharp, they use a slicer and it can’t be handling the product as they have gloves. Any one know why or want to have a guess?

It’s taken me over a month of a half of almost daily phone calls I finally had 3 admit there was nothing more they could do, that the level of service wasn’t acceptable and said I could break my contract without penalty. I can’t believe the amount of perseverance required to get to this point; it was almost impossible to get them to acknowledge that no matter what their spiffy map said, Derrimut has severe mobile phone reception problems for 3. I think the clincher was that three calls from their very own tech’s dropped out within a couple of minutes.

This was not my only 3 related victory today, I also got them to drop $26 worth of fees after a problem with my credit card caused a missed payment. i called them to ask for the charges to be removed and they said there was no way they could cancel $16 of the charge, that was until I said “okay, I need to recover my costs too so please cancel my data plan”. Suddenly ‘no way’ turned in to ‘just this one time only’. Proves once more that you just have to ask.

Now I’m looking for a new phone provider. I’m leaning towards going with TPG, I’m already with them for my net connection, and they offer a plan with the same call rates as an Optus plan but at half the monthly fee. The main benefit though is they have no contract so I’ll be able to move to another provider once I stop dithering and finally  decide between the iPhone 4 or an Android based phone. But for now, that can wait, I have a victory dance to do.

Two days down and I’m well and truly over it. Yes I broke my arm on Thursday in the most innocuous of fashion’s. I simply tripped over my feet, one second I was standing the next second I was on the ground with my arm pinned under me. For the first half-hour or so I thought all was okay and it may have just been sprained but no such luck. The pain kicked in and as soon as Nanna and uncle Rob turned up it was off to the hospital. An x-ray showed that I wasn’t being a sook and I had a radial head fracture. Basically the knobbly bit at the end of my radius bone has snapped in two.

Thankfully I don’t require plaster, just a sling for the next six weeks. This means I can shower and sleep okay but it is still a drag as I have no strength in my left hand so everything has to be done one-handed. Most importantly I can still make coffee, oh,  and use a mouse. Typing is frustrating but I’m using NaturallySpeaking to help me out. This is the first time I have used dictation software and while I’m getting used to it I can see myself using it even once I have both hands back. With only the barest of training I’ve managed to dictate this blog entry with a minimum of corrections required. I tried the speech recognition built into Windows 7 and while it was good and more intuitive than Dragon, Dragon is far more accurate.

The worst thing is being helpless around the house. Everything seems to take twice as long and there are some things that I just can’t do; hanging out clothes, washing dishes in the sink, sweeping up, picking up the kids etc. I hate having to ask Rae for help all the time, the six weeks will be very difficult for her. I’ve even called in the big guns and asked my mum to come and help a little.

I’m still taking it easy to let the pain and swelling go down before getting back into work. I truly can’t wait until this sling it gone, only 40 days to go.

Can anyone help me? You may have read how St John’s Concreting of Taylors Lakes damaged our garden bed and then abused me when I asked to talk to someone about it. They never showed up to repair the damage, as the guy on the phone said they would, by last weekend and no contact this week so I need to call them back.

Thing is I’m not sure what my next step is and I want to know before I make the call. If someone decides they can do what they want to your property and then ignore you what recourse do you have? Is there an ombudsmen, a dispute centre or is it (technically) criminal damage that I should be reporting?

Here’s a pic of what they have done. It may not look like much to you but they’ve gone a meter over the property line (that runs with the fence). They’ve dug our dirt, covered rocks with mud and pushed it all up. You’ll notice they had no problem not knocking down the existing fence.

So – any one out there know what I should be doing?

Again, it’s not the neighbour who is the problem here – it’s the contractor.

Way to do business. I just called [I’ll name them if nothing happens] and asked to speak to someone about the damage they had done to one of our garden beds when they were concreting next door.

The response when I asked to speak to someone about what had happened was “Don’t be rude”. Nice. When I then pointed out I wasn’t being rude and that the real rudeness was doing what they did and just walking away hoping nothing would be said I was told “don’t you have a brain in your head, the concrete is still wet”. Nice.

I don’t particularly care if the concrete is wet, they shouldn’t have caused the problems in the first place. Let’s see what comes of this. Oh, and I’ve taken photos. Lots and lots of photos.

UPDATED 5:00PM Two Days Later

Despite being told they would send someone to fix up the damage by the weekend no one has appeared and there’s been no call back to either apologise or arrange for it to be fixed. The business that caused the damage was St John’s Concreting of 2 Mawson Cl, Taylors Lake. I’ll investigate what options I now have next Monday.

It’s street day. For the past two years I’ve taken a photo of our street on this day, so who am I to mess with tradition.

2010 – Every block built on, every house lived in and five changes of occupants in the past year including two new neighbours for us.

It’s getting to the stage where people have recovered from building and are now beginning to start working on the front of their houses. Still a long way to go but the street we hope to live in for a long time yet is slowly coming together.

(Not sure why I took the photo on this day originally, I really should have taken it in Spring or Summer when the street looks good.)

2009 – Every house built and lived in and one remaining block is underway.

2008 – Four houses under construction and empty blocks everywhere.

Ever since the twins came along we’ve been talking about getting a freezer. Over the past few months it’s become increasingly obvious we need one. Phee is eating like a teenager and the young one’s appetites are growing every day. The poor old side by side just can’t cope with the amount of food we need to store and with the price of food we going to have start buying in bulk. A few cheques arrived all at once this week and there was enough left over for us to head to Highpoint.

We started off at Good Guys. Great range, lots to look at then along came Sue. She was fantastic. Dragged the kids off to give them balloons while we talked, knew her stuff, pointed out things we needed to know, offered to match any internet price and knew when to drop back.

We then wandered across to Harvey Norman. It was the polar opposite. Hardly any stock and when a salesperson eventually came by she gave the impression she would have preferred to have been anywhere else but there. No sales talk, nothing to say about the products and when we asked about chest freezers she took us over to what they had and disappeared, just like we did shortly after. I’m also looking at a phone upgrade and made the mistake of thinking someone there may have been able to help me. Foolish me. While Rae went to get the kids a snag  I stood looking at their selection for a few minutes, then tried to spot someone who may have been able to help. I gave up on the phone too.

Any way, we went back to Good Guys and bought the freezer, delivered same day. Sue again was great, and smart. She heard us talking about eventually needing a new washing machine so she gave us her card “for when we want to come back”, complete with her shopping list on the back. We’ll go straight back to her when we need to, won’t even bother with HN next time.

One other thing Sue did was show me 3D television. i have to admit I’ve dismissed this as a fad, something that will never take off. Dear god I was so wrong. I watched two minutes of a rugby game, a sport I know nothing about nor care about, but I was blown away. It’s indescribable to be a part of the game like that. Once they start broadcasting AFL in 3D there won’t be enough factories in China to keep up with demand. And if it’s this impressive for a first generation product I can’t even begin to think what it will be like by the time we can afford it.

Hopefully Sue will still be around to sell us a set.