Anthony Malloy

Mid April and the temperature gets to 28.8, just wonderful. What made it even better was Rae had taken an extra day off so we packed up the kids and took them down to Altona Beach. It was a great day for a walk along the pier, play in the park and stroll through the market.

Surely this will be summer’s last gasp, the BOM say it should be, so we’ll file away these memories to get us through until September.

It’s amazing what a difference hanging your own stuff on your own walls makes. Our major project for this long weekend has been to make our home feel more of our own, and a major part of that has been finally putting up our own stuff on the walls.

First off we have hung this massive old mirror in our entrance way. It’s directly opposite my office door so it’s a bit scary seeing myself every time I leave the office but it looks great.

I had an idea ages ago and I’m so pleased that it turned out as well as it did, even if it is on a different wall to what I imagined. We chose 16 photos of places and things that meant a lot to us, photos that we had taken. We then had them printed in black and white, put in to frames and they now grace the dining area wall. Eventually we want to put a buffet underneath them, but they’ll do for now.

And we’ve finally started getting our theatre room in place. The three movie posters (one a bit damaged ‘cause we didn’t store it properly) are along one wall. My pride and joy sits below Ferris – a ‘This theatre is equipped with Dolby Digital’ plaque that Rae bought for me five years ago. It’s been in storage waiting for the day we have our own place and now it’s up.

Next I’ll be taking a photo of the Astor’s neon sign and another of the Sun’s neon sign. We’ll have these blown up and put on the wall either side of the telly to complete the theatre room.

We’re still working on ‘homifying’ but we’ve made great strides this past week with planting seed in the backyard and getting our pictures up. There’s still a way to go but it’s really beginning to feel like our own place now.

 

 
 

It was a dirty day today, more so for Rae than me but we both got involved. It’s the continuation of the deck induced back yard work. When you have such a lovely deck you really can’t have it surrounded by dirt and weeds so over the past week we’ve flattened the back yard and today had a huge mound of top soil dumped out the front. Over the course of the day that mound has been moved, barrow load by barrow load, and spread over the back yard. Tomorrow we’ll flatten the new top soil out and then, with showers forecast for Sunday, we’ll toss some grass seed down and cross our fingers.

It’s amazing how different the place looks now, and it’s almost impossible to believe that with a bit of luck (and a bit of rain) we may even have a lawn of sorts for the kids to play on before winter hits. We’re getting there, slowly but surely.

You know, six people living in the house make a lot of dishes. Think breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks for the young ones in between, they all add up to a mountain off dishes. I stood at the sink washing the lunch dishes the other day and though ‘we need a dish washer’.

One of my sisters had already offered to lend us the money to buy one, but trying to keep debt down we said no. Still, it was great to know the offer was there and I was getting tempted to take Kate up on her generous offer. However my little sister rang yesterday – she found one for us that someone was getting rid of ‘only because my wife wants to get a stainless steel one’. Apparently it’s a give away but because I’ve done a fair bit of web work for her drama school in Shepparton she’s not telling me how much.

We’re going to pick it up some time this weekend and thanks to the kindness of my sisters we’ll be saving over half an hour of hassles every day. I’m a lucky brother.

The police helicopter spent the better part of yesterday afternoon chuckin’ laps around the neighbourhood. I wonder if we can dob in a hoon…

If you dropped by early this morning you may have noticed things looked a little odd around here, that’s because I’ve moved hosts for this site. The old host was bought out by a new company and that company has been nothing but hassles so I’m moving all of my sites.

I’ve had a quick look around, everything seems okay so fingers crossed. Daniel, you’ll be pleased to know that after 7 years I’ve finally moved it out of the WordPress directory too.

UPDATE

Of course, as soon as I typed this and hit Publish I found a problem that meant I had to move the site back to the WordPress directory. One day when I have time I’ll move it out.

Sitting here wondering why it’s so bloody hot, even after putting the air con on. Finally realise there’s no air coming through the vent (after two hours) so I go and check. Yep, I had turned the heating on instead.

I need rest.

It must be a while. I was watching an ad on telly last night and thought, “oh wow, that would feel great”.

Yes, it was hot and steamy too; the ad was for an iron.

It’s over a year since I left work to be at home looking after the kids and running my own web development business. In that time I’ve attended two weddings so that’s a grand total of two crisply ironed shirts I’ve worn in over 12 months. My daily uniform is now shorts and t-shirt in summer and jeans and rugby tops in winter. I thought the only thing I missed about working was the people, but watching that shirt being ironed I now realise there’s something else I miss; dressing well.

Coping with the mess three young kids make over the course of the day means there’s just no point in going any where beyond jeans and something that doesn’t show up the stains too much but one day when they are all at school and I can concentrate on Between Coffees properly I look forward to moving back to ironed shirts and shoes that need polishing. Who knows, there may even be a tie thrown in every now and then for good measure. Ah, those will be the days.

People. They all annoy me, well, except maybe for you.

I know we all break rules every now and then, push boundaires and play the odds BUT what sort of idiot does that when it’s a red light and they are in a car?

I had pulled up at the lights just as they turned red. I was sitting, minding my own business, looking at the RED disc on the lights opposite me when all of a sudden a car pulled up beside me but instead of stopping it just continued through. Now I have to reiterate, the light was red. Not orange, not just turned red, not just a little bit red but 100% solid-and-had-been-for-a-while red. They didn’t speed up, just kept on going.

What on earth!?!?

What could they have been thinking? What makes a person think that’s an okay thing to do – dicing with other people’s lives just because they feel like it? I don’t get it, I just don’t get it. And don’t get me started on drivers using mobile phone. Have you noticed they always seem to be driving expensive cars, the cars that cost enough to suggest the owner should probably be able to afford a $100 hands free? On the weekend we saw a guy driving a van, holding on to a phone as he went around a roundabout, while a passenger sat next to him. As I said, people!