Anthony Malloy

The cooking adventure continues. Tonight I made sushi for the first time. General reaction is that it shouldn’t be the last.

Normally when I take photos of old signs around Melbourne they are on the outside of buildings.

Last night Zita came over to give Rae and a little ‘grown up’ time. We headed around to the Famous Blue Raincoat for a drink and on the way saw that Triple J Cellars was moving from one shop to the new building next door. The old shop dates back to the 50s and I found some great old signs that hadn’t been touched in years.

My guess is that the two McWilliam’s signs are 50s era originals, as is the ‘Jet Air Door’ above the door, and the rest in the slide show date from the 70s and 80s. They’ll all be gone over the next couple of days as the place is gutted for its next occupants; I wonder if any of their fittings will be around for someone to photograph in 2057?

 

We seemed to have got Christmas right this year. In years past we’ve been rushing to and fro and boxing day; our place, Rae’s grand parents, my mum – spread out over a couple of hundred kilometres. Christmas and Boxing Day have disappeared in blurs of cars, hugs, presents and then more cars. The kids got to see their presents for a few minutes before heading off and no one got any rest.

This year we did things differently. We headed up to Shepp for the weekend prior to Christmas and had dinner on the Saturday at my sister’s place. Saturday and Sunday we spent at mum’s and while she got her fill of grandchildren goodness  while we read the paper, watched a bit of telly and just relaxed.

Monday we gave the place a bit of a clean in preparation for the big day and thankfully, as we’d been organised, didn’t have any last minute dashes to the shops or last minute wrapping of presents to do. We tried to be good with presents for the kids this year, just one or two really good presents and that was it but by the time nana and friends presents were added the tree looked obscenely overloaded. Something to work on next year.

Christmas day turned out to be possibly the best we’ve had together. Zita and Rob came over in the morning for presents – Bert was especially fun to watch  as this year was his first really understanding what was going on. It’s going to be fantastic in two years when Henry and Kennedy can join in. Rae’s nana joined us later in the morning for the traditional roast lunch.

Even though I’m the dad I didn’t get to claim my traditional snooze, instead we all sat outside and watched Phee and Bert chase bubbles around the back yard. Later on there was a board game for Phee before leftovers for dinner. Ah, Christmas, how my waistline despises you.

Of all the odd ways to finish off Christmas day we spent it watching a horror film. Well, more of a horror mini-series. Rae had received ‘It‘ on DVD and for some reason we all thought that seemed like a good one to put on to round out the festive day. Twenty minutes in Phee was sent screaming from the room after her act of bravado was shredded by one scary clown. And to think she wants to watch Poltergeist….

Boxing Day was a perfect day weather wise. I know that people who know me won’t believe this but I spent most of it outside. The one stupid tree we have in the back yard gave me enough shade to sit reading History’s Worst Decisions and the People Who Made Them. I had my iPod and my camera with me, just lovely.

More leftovers, more relaxing and to finish the night the Doctor Who Christmas special, hot off the PC. What a perfect two days.

Family, sun, food, drink, presents, fun.

Hope your day was as good as ours.

Ho ho ho everyone.

It’s going to be a great Christmas this year, Bert is right in to Santa and I can’t wait to see his reaction tomorrow morning after the jolly fat man (ie me) has been and put presents under the tree. Phee will still be a big kid when it comes to presents and Henry and Kennedy will have no idea what’s going but happy there are lots of people to give them hugs.

Thanks for stopping by in 2007 and I hope you all have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Well, the ‘arton car park‘ is changing. Another little bit of Shepp’s history is torn away.

They’ve torn down the old parcel pick up and travellers rest rooms, apparently to expand the car park. I really have to get up to Shepp and get some photos of the older buildings that mean something to me before they all disappear.

After 16 years working in the one building (in many different jobs ranging from a dish washer to Internet geek) I moved campuses today. Space constraints in a rapidly growing department saw the programmers (who I get lumped in with) move to a completely different building – one that is as much in the middle of nowhere as you can be in the inner east.

We were moving our own computer equipment in when today’s massive storm hit. We were caught, the PC’s were safe. As were setting up we got the news that storm had wiped out the new phone system so we were without phones. Then one of my colleagues shorted out the office by turning on his PC. A few minutes later a call came through on the bosses mobile – there was  problem with one of our sub-sites. A problem that could only be fixed by accessing the programs installed on my computer. The one with no power.

I left for home, and my Christmas break, two hours later. No phones, no power, no PCs but we had scored a beer.

And they weren’t too bad.

It was a movie day today – I saw two film units in different parts of town. One was in Malvern and given the age of the houses around there it could have been shooting The Pacific. The other was in Spotswood in the church on the corner of Hudson and Williamstown Rd. There was another couple of vans a couple of blocks away, probably 2nd unit on the same production.

Keeping an eye on proceedings were a couple of police on motorbikes. Then again they may have been keeping an eye out for the two prisoners who managed to kick their way out of a prison transport van just up the road. Will be triple checking the locks tonight.

We got the bill from the solicitor for conveyancing today. Thankfully it was finalised as part of the settlement figure (although Rae let me stress a few minutes before telling me that, evil wife that she is). Seriously people – $52 for photocopying! They must use powdered gold for toner.