Life Outside

3 Years on...

2006-03-15T17:49:00.000+08:00

Paul and I are celebrating our 3 year anniversary this Friday, three years since our first coffee. This is what I wrote in my online diary just before meeting him 3 years ago:

“I am meeting one of the guys this Saturday for a coffee and I have to admit am pretty excited about this one. He is a few years younger than me (always wanted a toy boy) is 6ft 5 of man (I love tall men) unfortunately is an Aries, but so far doesn't seem to have the annoying child like qualities that I have discovered in other Aries men and we have so, so, so, so much in common that it has shocked and delighted both of us. If nothing else this one is a keeper for a long term friendship. But there is this little hopeful part of me that hopes that when we meet there will be some kind of spark there. He rang me today and he has a voice like honey, all warm and soothing, not a trace of an Australian accent (thank the goddess) is intelligent and articulate and hrmmm...ok better stop gushing now ;)”

And then the next entry….

“Well Saturday’s coffee turned into a Wed night coffee as my baby sitter fell through for Saturday.

We met at a cafe down near my place and I have to say the first 10 to 15 minutes were a tad uncomfortable, but then we started talking and two and a half hours later they were closing the place up around us. We left and both got home and jumped onto icq where we continued chatting. Decided we wanted to meet up again and would see what i could do about a baby sitter.

I managed to get a baby sitter again last night and he took me to the movies. But not just the movies, here we have a cinema that has what I guess you would call a dress circle. Huge big comfy chairs and free pop corn and drinks. It was fantastic. And he is fantastic.

I feel so comfortable with him and that scares me after only 2 dates and a week of chatting on icq. After the movies we went to a friend’s house and chatted till 2am. Then went home and talked on icq about how we were feeling. I have decided that I want him to meet master 5 and a half to see how he feels before this goes any further. So today after work we are meeting at Mc Donalds.

I still have 3 other guys who have given me their numbers and I have said I would organise a time to meet them for coffee, if today goes well I will have a chat with Mr 6ft5" and see how he feels and how I feel and maybe put meeting the others on hold for awhile until he and I can see where this is heading. I don't feel a real need to meet any of the others atm except that I feel it is right that I should after they have paid money to make contact with me.

Anyway we will just have to wait and see what happens today - he may spend 10 minutes with master 5 and a half and decide that being with a single mum is not what he is after.”

I never did meet with the others, and three years down the track it seems I was exactly what he was looking for and he was exactly what I needed to compliment me.

He and I have been through a lot since that date at Mac Donald’s and he has turned out to be the best father and husband a girl could ever want for.

First Days

2006-02-02T18:00:00.000+08:00

Zac started his first day of school yesterday and I had my first attack of seperation anxiety! The day started out very well. I had organised to have a couple of hours off in the morning so I could take him to his Before and after school care and be with him when he went to his class for the first time.

He was understandable nervous as he had his breakfast, but then afterwards posed for photos. He looked fantastic in his uniform...so grown up!

We packed his lunch in his new bag and we were ready to go!

When we finally got to his new class the teacher was very abrupt with us and then Zac was snubbed by one of the other kids. He was in a split 2/3 class and it seemed that half the kids didn't speak any English and all I could think was I had made a HUGE mistake. We had moved house, uprooted Zac from everything he knew to get him into this school and as I left Zac the tears welled in my eyes. He looked so lost and out of place. I was sure I had made a huge mistake. By the time I hit the school oval I was ready to go back to the class room and pull him out of the class and home school him! As you can tell by that last statement I was not in my right frame of mind!

I made it to the car and started crying. I decided to go see my Mother in law for reassurance and by the time I was knocking on her front door I was hysterical! I had deserted my baby boy in that horrible place and he was going to be damaged for life because of this horrible mistake I had made!

Starting to see how this went yet?

Of course the wonderful mother in law made me feel much better, clamed me down, made me coffee, rang the school and organised a meeting with the principal and reminded me that I pay the teachers wages and if I am not happy then we will fix it. Zac is the most importent person in the equation and she would do what ever it took to make sure he was getting the best.

I managed to go to work for a couple of hours before the meeting without shedding any more tears and by the time Paul and I saw the principal I was feeling more positive. The princilap was fantastic, put all of my concerns at ease and bottom line was that we would all keep an eye on Zac and communicate and we would address any problems as they arose. It was all the reassurance I needed.

Paul and I met Zac at the out of school care after the meeting. I was expecting a child who would refuse to return to the school, hated the teacher and had made no friends. Instead I was greeted by a child who had had the most fantastic day, loved his teacher, had made new friends and couldn't wait to go back tomorrow!

Kids go figure!!!

But then I worked it out. When he started at his old school, there was none of the usual first day dramas. He had been slowly introduced from the daycare he attended to the primary school over the course of a couple of years, so by the time he went there full time we were all comfortable with the transition into school and it was unemotional and pain free. I had just experienced what most mothers experience when they drop their kids off on the first day of school.

It has put me off having another child and cured any biological tickings that may have been tocking!

Water Dogs

2006-01-13T19:54:00.000+08:00

You can lead a horse to water... but a dog, you have to drag.

We'd taken the pups for a walk down to the foreshore the other night (hence the pictures from Kathy) and we immersed them up to about their knees in the river. Unfortunately neither of us was adequately dressed to lead the dogs in any further, so I vowed to remember to dress suitably and try again tomorrow.

Tomorrow came, a day of hurricanes and lots of rain. The walk down to the foreshore was postponed until better weather. Thankfully, the very next day or, to use somewhat confusing terminology, yesterday's tomorrow (ie today) was quite pleasant for an evening walk. I dressed suitably (thongs and bathers) and we trooped down to the foreshore yet again.

I started with Shadow, since I was leading him at the time. He was... reluctant... to put it mildly. Picture if you will, a fully grown weimaraner at the river's edge with all four legs splayed out in the classic "I don't want to go there!!" pose and me standing in the water dragging him in and hoping I wasn't about to step on a cobbler. Eventually I coaxed him in and got him in water up to his chest. He was not terribly amused but he wasn't pulling to get out either.

Having decided that was enough for the first attempt, I let him leave the water and I grabbed Bella's lead. She was a little easier, being shorter it didn't take as long to get her into deep water. As I led her into the water (she was reluctant but more eager to please her humans) she got to her chest and she paused for a moment... looked at me... splashed a paw out... and then she started swimming! Bella pretty much turned on the spot and headed for shore but she did it! I led her out a few more times but she turned for shore the moment her paws left the riverbed.

I tried again with Shadow, who was far less reluctant to head out with me this time and he ended up swimming too! Big, powerful strokes... I made him swim around me first before heading back to the safety of the shore. I took both dogs out several times, Shadow was clearly more comfortable with the idea than Bella. However, Bella "chatted" with us the whole way back home. I don't know if she was trying to tell us that she'd rather not do that again or if she was saying "Wow... that was actually kinda fun, I wanna go deeper next time. Can we go again? Can we? Huh? Can we?".

We'll take them swimming again sometime soon, perhaps in the evening like tonight when there aren't as many people to witness the spectacle of dogs that are afraid of water. Am I proud of my hydrophobic puppies though, today was a big accomplishment. Hopefully there will be much more swimming to come.

On the way back, we got to admire yet another spectacular sunset. I'd forgotten that on the foreshore, these sunsets are almost a dime a dozen. Hopefully I won't ever take another one for granted again. Kathy actually turned to me on the way back and asked, "What made you move out to South Guildford?".

The answer, of course, was to be with her. I'd taken all that living in this area had to offer for granted. Having moved away and moved back, I think I've grown a sudden appreciation everything South Perth has to offer. It definitely has a bit of a "village" feel to it, which I guess is both good and also bad in some ways. I don't think we'll be moving any time soon if we can help it.

2006-01-13T18:31:00.000+08:00

Pictures from our walk the other night....

Wired for Sound

2006-01-12T18:31:00.000+08:00

It should be noted that my old pair of headphones decided they were under a bit of pressure and ended up with a distressed cable (you know the one... it works but only after you jiggle the cable a little bit). Initially I solved the problem by looping the cable around one earpiece which supplied just the right pressure for everything to work.

Unfortunately that didn't last and I was left with sound in only one ear, which was annoying to say the least. I decided to be a bit of a home electronics handyman and promptly set about unscrewing the headphones to discover their inner workings... after all, I reasoned, I can't possibly make them any worse.

Luckily, I didn't make them any worse but I didn't end up fixing the problem either. What I did discover is that apparently soldering connections is entirely out of vogue... why solder two wires together when you can kinda stick them together and then tape them? Yes... tape... I shit you not. Anyway, after a lot of fiddling, some swearing and learning something special about tweezers, wires and tiny contact areas the damn headphones still only produced sound in one ear.

Enter Sean, who offered to go and buy a pair of headphones for me. I did the right thing (I think) by politely declining the first time, the second time he offered I decided it would be a lot better than the mp3 player earbuds I was using (the cable on them was entirely too short). Boy did I score nicely! I have no idea what the headphones cost, although Sean assures me they weren't terribly expensive but they sound much better than what I'd been using and have a certain... solidness... to them that suggests they probably used solder rather than tape to hold the inner workings together (I could be wrong on this but I'm not willing to find out).

Thanks Sean!

Commentary

2006-01-11T21:21:00.000+08:00

Just a brief note to everyone to say that I've placed a few anti-spam measures on the comments feature. Hopefully nothing too onerous that might otherwise prevent genuine comments!

Real Estate Redux

2006-01-11T20:35:00.000+08:00

So I stood out the front of our old property waiting for the RE agent to come along and carry out the second "final" inspection. I thought back to how it was when we were living there and what it looked like now.

It looked so promising when we first decided to move in -- this big house for 3 adults and one child, a huge backyard for the child to play in and explore, a huge shed to park the cars in and several vegetable gardens to grow a variety of vegies and herbs. We had such dreams, but soon our dreams soon turned to dust... actually it wasn't that bad, I just wanted to get a little poetic and segue into dust.... dust, dust and more dust.

My poor, poor computers were never terribly happy there. Their fans groaned, creaked and often refused to work for the dust gathered on them. I have no idea how I survived in that place, particularly since one of my asthma allergies is dust mites (perhaps even the mites refused to live in that much dust?). There was never any point to pro-active cleaning... within a few days you'd hardly know that we'd swept the floor at all. Having visitors always meant a lot of last minute cleaning to try and at least look like we didn't live in a dustbowl.

We're out of there... or almost anyway. The only thing tying us to that dust place is our bond, which involved cleaning the dust... repeatedly. It also involved raking the driveway and the front yard. It also involved cleaning the large shed (that ended up being too small for our cars anyway) which we largely had not used since shortly after moving in there.

Which brings me back to this very day, standing outside the old property and admiring the orange dust already settling on my leather shoes. The RE agent arrived on time and began the inspection.

To cut a long story short, basically everything was ticked off the list apart from a few small things which should take a leisurely morning or so rather than 8+ hours of hard, hard labour. The items in the shed are still contested, we're waiting on a list from the owner regarding what stuff they left in the shed (and on the property in general). There was some temptation on my part to manhandle the RE agent to the floor and say "SEE?!?! That is clean... we cleaned it again so now it has been swept, vacuumed, mopped and then mopped a SECOND GODDAMN TIME!". Thankfully I managed to resist the temptation... it may have biased the rest of the inspection process against me.

We're so close to never, ever having anything to do with that place ever again that I can almost taste it... and it tastes like victory (which, strangely enough tastes like dust... or perhaps I'm getting a little obsessed with dust, dust, DUST, DUST... uhhh... never mind).

If you're ever looking to rent (or buy) and you see that the RE agent is Chard-Walker Harwood & Brown, run a long way away. Or mock them. Mocking them would be good, but I'm not telling anyone to do that... just, y'know, putting the idea out there.

What can you do but laugh?

2006-01-06T17:56:00.000+08:00

Well Paul went in to the RE Agent and picked up this “list” of things we had to do. Already we could see that this wasn’t about us but about their incompetence.

Some of the gems in the things we had to fix were to remove the ladder from the property – ah would that be the ladder that was supplied with the property so we could clean the gutters? Sure it’s a you-beaut-super-dooper ladder – we will remove it!

There was also mention that we had to remove the 6 ft happy plant from the driveway that is worth about $500. It also came with the property. Sure we can take that!

While we are at it would you like us to remove the air conditioner from the wall?

There are some genuine things on there but I think the best one was that we had to clean the dust of the pelmets (which we had done, with the ladder as we have 12ft ceilings) We wonder how she, being 5 ft nothing, checked the said pelmets when the ladder that we used to clean them with was still down the side of the house…hrmmmm. I didn’t know property agents could fly!

General comments such as clean the obvious marks off the walls have brought us to the conclusion that she had to find things to pick at and if she couldn’t she made them up.

So we will go back and work off her list of phantom duties and then work out where we are going to store the $200 ladder and $500 potted plant (nah we were honest and told her they belonged to the house – the joy of showing her and her incompetency up was worth ever cent in my book)

Not so fast....

2006-01-05T18:40:00.000+08:00

*EDIT ON LAST POST*

Ok they have done the inspection and we are not done...apparently there is 3 pages of stuff we didn't do!! WTF?!?! I would have said the place was in better condition than when we left it, but when they spoke to Paul they said that the floors hadn't been done, the picture rails were dusty, all the stuff I spend the last couple of days doing. He wanted me to go in there tonight and pick up the list but I couldn't, I just couldn't face them. He is going to do it tomorrow. And I thought it was over.....

Oh and who is me who left the last comment? I would love to catch up if I knew who you were ;-) Let me know and we will call and organise something!

And it is done!

2006-01-04T20:20:00.000+08:00

Well we are done. We have handed in the keys to the old property and everything we own is here at our new “home”. Paul and I are completely exhausted. It hasn’t helped Paul any that he is on the 3.30am shift. He has worked so hard and I am so proud of him. He deserves something special this weekend, a bit of spoiling is in order J

I ache in places I shouldn’t, such as my right elbow from all the scrubbing I did. I am pretty house proud and a bit of a neat freak and so it came as a bit of a shock to me as to how dirty the house was, things that you just don’t notice while you are actually living in a place, like the dust under the fridge, or how grubby the pots and pans cupboard is. I made mental notes this time around of those nasty spots and they will get regular attention while we are here.

In the middle of the cleaning we had a visit from friends over east. It was so good to see Lil and Pixie. The arrived new years evening and we ate and caught up. Paul geeked with Pixie, he loves it when we catch up with them and Lil and I reconnected. I have missed her. I have so few “close friends” and when she left I thought of it as loosing one, but we have worked out ways to stay in touch that allow for my horrid lack of emails and my inability to pick up a phone. The thing I loved the most was that after 18 months of not seeing her we just picked up where we left off, there wasn’t a pause or a stutter…it just flowed. The sign of a true friendship.

Having them stay also made me realize that Paul and I don’t get out and socialize enough. We are so content with each other and our own company that we have let many friendships slide. 2006 will be the year that changes and I will make the effort to be social and get out more and if I have to drag Paul kicking and screaming so be it. But he enjoys small gatherings and likes all of my friends so I don’t see it being too much of an issue. And the full moon dinners will start again as well. It will be good to see the girls on a regular basis.

Ok I really must feed Zac and get some sleep. Hopefully this will be the last night of takeaway for awhile and life shall resume as much as normal as it possibly can in our household.

General updating

2005-12-16T06:53:00.000+08:00

So much has happened over the past 3 months that here I will just cover the highlights (seeing Paul won’t!) so that we can all get back to general viewing.

My new job is going well. Once I actually settled in and realized that work didn’t involve me being a stress monkey, everything worked out ok. We have a new boss now, I have moved upstairs and we have a junior or two. Work life is good now that I am not the office junior anymore.
I had a horrible gall bladder episode which turned out to be an infection. I have only 2 things to say about it. labour was less painful and morphine is my new best friend. Well it was. I only had one shot, but I will be forever grateful!
We are moving house. We will be closer to Paul’s mum and Grand parents. I will update in a couple of months and let you know if this was a smart move or not. At the moment it seems smart as we will be further away from my mother.
Zac is going to go to the same primary school that Paul went to. We will finally discover if the problems were school or Zac. I am starting to think they were his old school as that is the only place that complains about his behavior. Either that or he has a split personality.
We went and saw a clinical Psyc. in regards to Zac’s behavior. What a waste of $110! He decided in the first 5 minutes that Paul and I were volatile and that Zac was learning his behavior from his environment. He deduced this from some incorrect information his receptionist had given him before we arrived. Even after Paul explaining that if were to be any les volatile we would be sleeping he still didn’t change his mind. Oh and this was in-between him telling us how good he was. It was a bad appointment.

So time to wake the boys and get this day underway….we pick up the keys in a few hours.

Work

2005-09-20T14:05:00.000+08:00

Paul will kill me when he reads this, I am meant to be resting as I came home sick with a headache, but I am waiting for the pain killers to kick in and thought now would be as good a time as any to post.

After quite a bit of deliberation on my behalf I handed in my resignation at my old place of employment about a month and a half ago. The straw that broke the camels back event finally took place with my old manager calling me into a meeting and telling me how I faff around and don't do any work and so on and so forth. A complete pack of lies and at the time and I called her on it which lead to some rather heated words and us agreeing that the meeting was going nowhere and that we would meet again tomorrow.

That night, after speaking with Paul, who was in Adelaide, I sat down and wrote my letter of resignation. I had been involved in so many of those meetings with the ex boss that I had finally had enough. I had literally printed out the email when the phone rang. Someone had foud my resume on Seek and were me in for an interview. At the time I was stoked. It was like the universes way of telling me I had made the right decision.

To cut a long story short, although the company met all my pay demands and the hours were really good, the boss gave me the creeps and so I turned the position down. No big loss I found what I thought was going to be my perfect career in recruitment and although the pay was a bit less than hoped for and the hours a bit longer than desirable, I took the position.

The first week was pretty quiet. Day three, the manager that hired me handed in his resignation, which was a bit of a shock. But all in all the job seemed like a holiday compared to the stresses of the previous job and if the truth be told I was a little bored. Everyone commented on how quickly I was picking things up and everything seemed fine except that I was only doing data entry. Week two and I am still doing data entry. A couple of days into week two I rang Paul and told him I wasn't happy. I was bored, I hated the longer hours, I was seeing hardly anything of him and even less of Zac. I wanted out.

Paul suggested I hang in there and see what happened with the new manager starting, I agreed as it was only a couple of weeks and I hung up. My mobile then rang. It was the head of HR for a government position I had applied for. I had been short listed for a position and they wanted me to come in for an interview. This one is more pay and less hours and I can drive to and from work. I organised an interview time for tomorrow.

I am hoping that this is the universes way of giving me my perfect job. When I started working for the company I am with, I had to start working again soon to bring in some money, it has tided me over till this government position came along and given me an opportunity to explore a career I thought I might be interested in. I have discovered I need to be busy, I am not keen on "stressful busy" but "know what I am doing and get down and do it busy" is good. I am hoping that the govenment position will be just that - a nice medium where I can spend the next 25 years until I retire.

Sickness

2005-08-15T23:08:00.000+08:00

I'm finally on the mend after an illness that I would not want to experience ever again.

I haven't been sick like this for a very, very long time. It started Thursday with me feeling a little off-colour, I knew I was coming down with something but I assumed it to be just another cold. How wrong could I be!

By Thursday night I was in the grip of a bad fever and one of the worst headaches I've ever experienced. The painkillers I was taking were only just taking the edge off the headache, where normally I react fairly well to pain medication. My whole body ached as well, it even hurt to move my eyes.

The fever and the headache stayed with me until this morning when both finally eased up -- that was such an incredible relief. With the fever & headache calming down, the rest of the flu symptoms (runny nose, etc) have started to appear but I don't mind those so much as I can deal with them easily enough.

Thankfully, Kathy has been a wonderful nurse and has taken me to the doctor's as well as spending a small fortune at the chemist on painkillers and cough medicine.

I'm not sure where I got this nasty flu from though... I know a couple of the guys at work have been off sick but they didn't appear to be hit this hard. I used public transport this week and I also spent two days out at a minesite so I guess I've been exposed to more people than I normally would have been so I guess I'll never really be certain.

Short Straw

2005-07-31T10:00:00.000+08:00

It looks like I drew the short straw at work yet again.

Because one of the guys is on leave, they needed someone to work the early shift. Stan (the team leader) turns to me and says "Would you be able to work the early shift next week?", he then went on to explain how he'd really try to get one of the others to do it... but low and behold, I'm still the guy doing the 4:30AM shift next week.

When I first started working there, they had me doing 2 weeks of the 4:30AM shift followed by two weeks of the 10AM shift. Now it appears that they want to avoid making someone do two weeks of the same shift because it is "unfair" -- unfair to who? I'm now in a situation where I'll have worked three 4:30AM shifts in a five week period. Oh... and then there is the site visit coming up in a couple of weeks.

Somewhere in there I'll probably get to see my family. That'd be nice.

Travelling

2005-07-28T19:32:00.000+08:00

So... I'm getting rather used to making my way to work and back home again on the scooter. I'm probably only spending about $9/week on fuel (2 tanks) -- it's bloody fantastic to pay for a full tank with the spare change in your pocket.

We're also planning a trip down to Walpole for Kathy's birthday, unfortunately Unisys West isn't playing nicely so we're left with me having only two half-days off (Friday afternoon and Monday morning of the weekend we're going down). However, we'll do what we can to make the most of it. On the positive side of things it means we should avoid a bulk of the weekend drivers and it still gives us time to get everything done.

I should also mention that I'm desperately hanging out for paid leave. I haven't taken paid time off work in years -- I've had "enforced" leave (ie: no job) but sitting around the house hoping to find work isn't quite the same as a holiday.

World of Warcraft is now bordering on an obsession since I discovered there are fairly easy ways to make lots of money. The way in which the game caters to almost every conceivable obsession is rather scary -- it doesn't matter what turns you on, you're likely to find it in here with the exception of porn (although female night elves look pretty hot if you strip them down to their underwear... hmmmm, possibly a little too much information there).

Well, I guess other than gripes about work, the need for a holiday and the temptation to wear a t-shirt at work that says "I'd rather be playing WoW"... things are going pretty well.

Death

2005-07-11T18:44:00.000+08:00

Paul is away in Adelaide this week. He flew out this morning. Yesterday while celebrating Zac's birthday we had the family around, both mine and Pauls. As they left both Paul's mum and Grandparents said that if I needed any help with anything while Paul was away to let them know. I was touched and thought it very sweet. I also had a little chuckle as I felt they had forgotten that I coped quite well on my own for the 5 odd years with Zac before Paul was in my life. It's funny how much you come to depend on someone for love and support when somethng happens.

Of course something had to go wrong while he was away. I hoped it would be something small such as being late for work or some such thing that I could cope with and tell Paul about after the event, have a little chuckle and that was that. Tonight I went to feed the rats and found my boy rat Merlin not looking too good. I don't think he will make it through the night to be honest. I freaked when I saw him so lifeless and the first thing I did was call Paul. I can't stand the though of Merlin being in pain or dying slowly but I can't take his life. I wanted Paul here to take care of it, to look after him and when he does die to be here for me. Once upon a time I could have delt with this alone and did deal with pets dying before. Suddenly I feel so helpless.

I rang Paul, I didn't know what else to do. In hinsight I should not have called Paul as he cares for all of our pets very much and he will be uspet as well over Merlins passing as much as I will be and neither of us are close enough to comfort eachother. Words over a phone line sometimes just aren't enough.

So now Paul is in Adelaide and I am here in Perth and we are both upset and I wish he was home. They say these things make us stronger, but more importantly this has made me realise how much I do rely on Paul and how I don't want to do this alone.

Week Ahead

2005-07-05T20:09:00.000+08:00

I have a feeling this might be a long post...

My week at work is off to a flying start -- they launched the new helpdesk client that we use for call logging today. However, the old system still has far too many tickets in it (around 900) so we can't close it off just yet. That leaves us with the lovely situation of having to run both helpdesk clients (the new & the old) in order to slowly reduce the number of open tickets in the old system so that we can copy the data into the new one.

So, in one short day I have been learning the new system while still handling all the regular calls (a higher volume than normal because is it the end of financial year), figuring out if someone's ticket is in the new or the old system and to top it all off one of our team called in sick today so we had his work on top of everything else as well.

I fly out first thing next Monday (the 11th) to Adelaide and return home on Friday (the 15th). This will be the longest that Kathy & I have been apart since we met, (except maybe the first week or so). I was a bachelor once... in fact I have been living out of home as a single man for nearly 7 years before I met Kathy (as most of you would know). However, the idea of having to suddenly fend for myself is very scary and it is attacking me from all angles. I love my creature comforts, I'm going to be stuck in a hotel room with minimal internet access during the day and nothing at all to do at night. Of course, I really love Kathy... the thought of not sharing time with her at night borders on the depressing.

Yet, this is what I signed up for when I took on this job. I have no idea what I was thinking, it all seemed so much easier at the time. Exciting even... jetting around the country for business always sounds so impressive. The reality of it is just so much less than that.

We're also hosting a combined birthday party for Zac & my mum on the Sunday before I fly out. It'll be fun, I know I'll enjoy it... but there is this nagging in the back of my mind that I'm going to spend a fair bit of time wishing I was alone with Kathy for the afternoon so I could squeeze out a week's worth of "together time". Yes, I know that sounds almost sickeningly cutesy but that's the truth.

Of course, my week away will provide Kathy with some benefits. She'll hopefully be able to get her Troll mage on World of Warcraft to level 30 (or fairly close to 30 anyway). Since getting my Tauren druid to 30 I've started building some characters to start farming (apparently herbalism is a good money earner) and I've found that the trade skill of fishing to be rather fun. Most of the other trade skills involve running all over the place to harvest/gather/mine various goodies that are in short supply. Fishing on the other hand requires only a reasonably large body of water and time. Already my Tauren hunter has a fishing skill in the 50+ range and she's only level 6.

Speaking of spending time with Kathy, I've barely seen her this evening so I'm going to finish up here and go climb into bed & watch TV together.

Sleepless

2005-07-03T02:04:00.000+08:00

I remember sitting at the computer after a very full on day at work yesterday and saying to Paul that I was going to lay down for 10 minutes. That was at just after 8pm. It is now 2am and I am wide awake!

I don't think I drank enough water yesterday as I am really thirsty. As I sit here typing this I have a 2 litre jug of cordial next to me (our tap water tastes really bad!) I am already half way through it.

The move so far went really well. My desk is unpacked as are my files. They are all in the compactus in true alpha and it makes my anal-retentive self pleased. It has been so much hard work redoing the client files. With room for expansion I have managed to fill a 7 bay compactus. Pretty impressive I must say.

Later this moring we will go into work and pick up the furniture I have purchased from work. Some new chairs and desks and a couple of other bits and pieces. We need to have a garage sale in the very near future. For some reason we have an excess of furniture.

I think I might go lay in bed and read. I am starting to feel a little bit cold and if I stay up now I am going to be ready for bed again come 5pm tonight!

Weekend

2005-07-02T07:23:00.000+08:00

Well I have half an hour till a work mate arrives with her child in tow and I have to leave for work. Yeah working again all weekend this weekend. Not sure how long for today, and tomorrow won't be for too long, but this will be the third weekend in a row. I am sure Paul is thinking his wedding vows didn't include to love honour and share his life with a major corporation, not his wife, but I keep assuring him things will get better.

He has been so supportive though. This particular work friend was in a mess, as we are moving buildings and we are all expected to be at work, but she has just broken up with her long term partner and lost her babysitter (on top of friend/lover etc). She was distraught and didn't know what to do. I loved that without even thinking or one moment of concern I said to her, "I am sure Paul won't mind watching Josh for you." I called him later and he didn't mind at all, but it was so wonderful to know that I could turn to him like that to help a friend out. He really does support me in so many ways and probably more than he bargained for when he met me :)

I am really excited about this move though. I have a "mini office" I have taken some pics with my mobile phone which I will post when I work out how. I will probably need the grand poobah of geeks help seeing am just a fledgling geek :) It is amazing how moving into a new and modern office can uplift everyones spirits.

Ok I really have to go get organised seeing I am still wearing my star flannel pj's. I really don't want to get caught like this!

It's A New Car!

2005-07-01T21:44:00.000+08:00

So... we've finally taken the plunge.

After endless months (okay, maybe about 6 or 7) of searching we have finally taken the plunge (which reads, I've finally stopped procrastinating and made a decision) and signed up for a '98 Toyota Camry.

With the trade-in on my petrol-guzzling bomb, a little bit of sweet-talking and fortunate timing we're paying a total of $8500. We're both pretty happy about it, the car looks to have been very well cared for and has only done 106,000km which is about 4.5 years of standard driving. I know Kathy managed to find some photos of the model we're buying (in the same colour too!) so I'll let her post some images of what we're getting for the curious amongst you.

In other transport-related news, it looks like I'll be zipping about town on a brand new scooter by next weekend. I got very desperate a few weeks ago to stop using public transport -- it is cheap and all but I have issues enough with crowds without having to deal with feverishly sick, coughing, weird crowds. I've had my personal space invaded way too many times and I swear the last time I got sick was because I caught whatever was being shared on the trains. Apparently sick people love to catch public transport, I'm sure they think sharing is caring.

Anyway, I'll be spotted going to and from work on a nice silver Vmoto Monza scooter. Yes, I'm sure my legs sticking out to the sides will make me look like a dick. However it is infinitely preferable in my mind to look like a dick on a scooter that costs me $5/week to run than crammed next to some person who has bad personal hygiene for $25/week. In fact, even with the cost of the loan factored in I'm still only going to be spending about $25/week for the scooter. I'll have the added bonus of actually owning a scooter, as compared to catching the train and having nothing but another mild neurosis to show for it.

All in all, our transport situation is going to be so much better in the next couple of weeks.

Our blog

2005-07-01T21:24:00.000+08:00

The idea for this endeavour came to me one busy weekday afternoon. I realised that perhaps we didn't always have the chance to keep in touch with as many of our friends as we'd like.

Between my shift work and Kathy's increasing work responsibilities our spare time is largely spent either doing all the things we need to do or hiding inside the house in our glorious trackpants and slippers trying to relax and rest a little before diving back into another hectic week.

However, we're both geeks (perhaps Kathy isn't a fully-fledged geek yet but I'm slowly working on that) and I figured it would be easy enough for both of us to keep a blog and fill it with snippets of our life so that our friends can at least catch up with what we're doing even though we don't have the time to actually catch up in person. Of course, we're not doing this as an excuse not to catch up with all of our friends and family -- we still need to work on our time management and all that sort of stuff because there is nothing more valuable than time spent with the people we know & love.

However, as a means to an end this blog will at least help us keep people informed and make us feel a little less like hermits.

So, onwards we go!