Anthony Malloy

While everyone was away today I made the most of a glorious winter’s afternoon and sat outside to get some work done. Bat Out Of Hell on the iPod and some sunshine made the rather dull work of designing a database just that bit more pleasurable.

All last week I’d been looking forward to Saturday night. Rob is away living it up in Adelaide so Rae and I were off to the footy to see my Tiger boys take on West Coast, their first game under the new coach. Rae and I haven’t been to the footy together since the twins came along so it was going to be a great night until I woke up on Saturday morning.

Gout.

My first attack in two years and it had to be yesterday. The day was lost waiting for a doctor’s appointment and sitting around not walking while the medicine tried to calm the pain. I’m so disappointed we didn’t get to go, sure, we won, which is great but a night at the foot with Rae, that’s what the weekend was going to be all about.

The pain has subsided a bit today with thanks to the wonderful drugs but I’m still hobbling and have missed a family trip to Sovereign Hill. Rae and Zita have taken all of the kids and I’m at home feeling sorry for myself. What rotten timing.

Oh, and Go Tigers.

Daniel has started another meme, this one is the alphabetical musical meme and, basically, pick a song on your pod that you’re in to at the moment (or at random) and what are the next 9 songs. Time to discover what I actually have on the little wonder.

1. Sinner Man, Nina Simone. Channel 10 use an instrumental piece from this under their live footy scores. Amazing song.

2. Sister Golden Hair, America. When I was just a young lad my sister, Judy, gave me America’s Greatest Hits on vinyl. When Ventura Highway was featured in an episode of Veronica Mars I downloaded the album again.

3. Sister Madly, Crowded House. Reminds me of Moriah St, all those, um, decades ago. Still have the cassette in a box somewhere.

4. Sister Moon, Transvision Vamp. I don’t care. I still love Velveteen. First concert I saw in Melbourne when I moved down, at Festival Hall – not the ‘ooops, there goes my dress’ gig at The Metro.

5. Sister Winter, Sufjan Stevens. Genius. ‘nuff said.

6. Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves, Eurythmics May have been the second concert I saw after moving down to Melbourne. Not the strongest track of that album, but the final line is still great.

7. Sisters Of Mercy, Leonard Cohen. Not one I know that well.

8. Sit Down, James. I love this song – it’s a 10 minute live version. There is a special place reserved in hell for people who blow hooters at concerts.

9. Situation No Win, Big Audio Dynamite II. Is it just me or is there a lot of 80s music on this list… This is Rush (Change of Atmosphere) from the live Globe bootleg.

10. Size Of A Cow, The Wonderstuff. 80s English music. Again.

Not sure how indicative this is of my actual music tastes, no need to comment Miss Marita, but there you have it.

I did the second coat of the deck this morning bright and early. It had been a dry night, no moisture or dew anywhere so I struck while the iron was hot/deck was dry and the coat was dry by lunch time.

And what a good thing that was.

This afternoon is a good old fashioned winter afternoon. Footy on the radio, sky so dark the lights were on all afternoon, comfort food in the oven, jumpers on inside (even with the heater on) and something very rare – soaking rain. Looking out on the deck I can see that Andrew was right, the extra two coats produced the wonderful site sight below.

Time for a little round up.

Thursday was my birthday and thanks to a sneaky wife and Mother In Law who gracefully accepted being the bad guy I had a surprise visit from mum and Peter. It was a total surprise when I answered the door to see them standing there and it was right at that moment I wish I had spent the morning cleaning the house instead of moping around on the PC. We ended up heading to The Coat for lunch  and then home for afternoon tea and some grandkid time.

Lunch was just one of the dining out experiences of my birthday. Wednesday night Rae and I got to go out together, again thanks to Zita. On Thursday the whole family went out for dinner, which even with a dodgy parma at The Deer Park Hotel, was lovely and then we topped it off with one of mum’s super light cream filled sponges.

Not talking about Friday. Goodbye Terry Wallace. Hello starting all over again.

Saturday morning I finally made it to Daniel’s place. He’s only been there three and half years and he’s only been to our place(s) on countless occasions over this time. Man I’m a bad friend. It was a great couple of hours sitting around and chatting with him and Miss Marita until the kids let us know it was time to leave. When you’ve got young kids never plan on spending more than a couple of hours in any one place that’s not your home.

I had a nap in the afternoon, a bit of footy on the telly in the evening and that was the day done.

This morning started off with a leisurely read of the papers and a big breakfast with coffees. I then did the first of two extra coats of oil on the deck, as recommended by the guy who built it, while Rae was busy hanging curtains and making ties for them. The deck looks great, must take a photo tomorrow when it’s freshly done, and our room is finally nice and dark at night. This afternoon we used the black out blinds in the theatre room for the first time and watched our latest QuickFlix DVD – Crash. What a fantastic film.

Now we’re bidding on a buffet on Ebay, watching MasterChef and getting ready to start one of my birthday DVDs, Scarface.

All this and there’s still one day of the weekend to go.

I had one of my recurring dreams last night, the one where a plane drops out of the sky and lands safely near by,  so I was a little disturbed to wake up to the news that a plane has disappeared over the Atlantic.

Zita, Rae’s mum, inherited Rae’s old laptop. She’s well and truly one of us now.

It’s really sad that I was working on two PCs in the office and the kids were playing Pinball on their PC at the same time.

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?