It's the final countdown

da da da daaaa ..... da da da da daaaaaa..... da da da daaaa daaa ... da da da da da

yeah go on admit it .. you sung along didn't you?? (if you are old enough to know the song).

Well it's Tuesday afternoon ... and I figure that although there are officially 3 days left in the week, I only have half a day left of work.

Andynomics working again??

No .... I'm going to work from home tomorrow and Thursday .. then pop in to the office on Friday to drop off my laptop and other bits and pieces then that's me done for this 6 month prison sentence!!

Of course my first day back at the old employer is going to be an easy one as I have to leave at lunch time to take Johnno to the airport!!!

Some people have it easy hey :-))

Greetings from Mt Black - nothing to do with the house..... sorry girls

Howdi all,

Greetings from Mt Black, My office in Rosebery Tasmania. If you think the place looks like a hole in the ground well your dead right...... it is, a bloody big, bloody deep hole in the ground that extends over 4ooo meters deep and they pull all the good stuff out of it. They mine some Copper, lead, and even some gold (between 30 and 50 kg/month, enough to cover payroll Im told), but by far the biggest product they mine here is zinc, some 660,000 tonnes of it last year. my job here is to look at a mine expension that will involve a new flotation line, a SAG mill and a ball mill that will boost the mines output to 1,000,000 tonnes of zinc a year. So the last couple of days I have been involved in a site survey of the mines HV electricity distribution and to finalize the location of several substations as well look at various other bits and pieces for different projects.

Ive been staying in a place called 'top pub', the local hotel where I have been meeting a few of the locals. Good, honest (mostly) straight talking folks that pretty much call it as they see it. The food here has been absolutely magnificent. You can get beautiful tender piece of scotch fillet for $22 bucks, great stuff.

The only bad thing is that this morning I was woken at 5am by the sound of the beer truck reversing, then the sound of the guy firing up the fork lift to unload it. Apparently I should count myself lucky that the guy slept in........ the beer usually arrives at 4am most weeks !!

Well its been a great trip, Ive finished all the stuff that I came here to do, had my trip down memory lane (I was last working here 17 years ago) and had a few good steaks as well, so all there is to do now is to drive back to Burnie, jump on the plane and be back in Melbourne for dinner with the ol ball and chain :)

J

I love this time of year

It's scary to think that Christmas is only 5 weeks away. Why is it that the older you get, the quicker life seems to go by?

2007 has been an awesome year for us. We have built a beautiful house and got married. No, there won't be hearing the pitter patter of tiny feet in the new house so it's a good thing that John's niece was born this year ... that's the closest we'll ever get!!

Sarah is in Grade 5 next year and before I know it she'll be off to high school.

Christmas is my all time favourite time of the year. I love the carols ... the decorations .. copious amounts of food and alcohol .... but more importantly, spending time with the people you love the most.

While there are some disappointments at this time (John going to Brisbane, paving area not done, front landscaping not finished) the joys of the silly season will far outweigh the negative stuff.

So deck the halls and joy to the world ..... heat, famine or flood could not ruin my good mood for the next 6 weeks!!!

A new driveway ... and a runaway husband

So I'll start with the good news.

Driveway has been cleared ready for the concretor to come in next week. Can't wait!!!! Although I've gotten so used to looking at it the way it is, it will take a while for me to get used to having something that looks good (fingers crossed anyway).

We are having stencilled concrete and the pic below is the pattern we have decided on. Colour will be Uluru Red. Bit worried about the colour as I'm sure a printed brochure is somewhat different to the colour the actual concrete will be .. but I'm putting my trust in the concretor that the colour comes out the way we want it.

I guess at the end of the day it's a driveway ... as long as it isn't pink or purple, it's not going to be such a big deal.



So on to the bad news .... my husband of just 3 months has decided that digging holes and building a paving area is far too difficult so he is going to work in Brisbane for 3-4 months to try and get out of it!! :-))

Just kidding about the 'getting out of work' bit ... not kidding about working in Brisbane.

He's off to work on some sort of gold mine or something like that and I'm hoping that he is back by March at the latest.

Pro's:

1. Only have to cook and clean up after myself
2. I can watch all the Seinfeld, Simpsons and Gardening Australia episodes I want to without a smart ass comment
3. I might be able to get my motorbike a little quicker if he doesn't spend his money on booze and hookers

Con's:

1. Will get lonely
2. Paving won't get done until mid next year
3. Who will I nag?
4. With no internet connection at the moment, how will I download the guide onto the Media Centre??
5. Will have to purchase another X-Box 360 to act as a media extender as he will take the current X-Box with him (mind you this one is also a positive because then when he gets back Sarah gets the X-Box in her room as another extender).

Unfortunately the nature of John's work is that this will be happening for the next 20 years or so, so I've learnt to just suck it up and deal with it.

He's off to Tassie this week for work and as he was packing he said "When I go to Brisbane, can I send you a load of washing each week?".

Good thing I wasn't holding something very sharp and pointy at the time.

:-)

Ok .. so stop your winging

OK ... I had my vent before regarding the heat and our lack of air conditioning. Hoping to gain some sympathy from my cyberspace buddies, I was quick to learn that my women friends are far more willing to empathise.

The men however ... [scoffs loudly]

So, I have decided to post a good news story instead.

As most of you know, my job for the last 6 months has allowed me to 'work from home' (or as John tenderly puts it 'shirk from home'). This has enabled me to visit loads of nurseries and do work in the garden!!! (I'm pretty certain none of my bosses read the blog so I've no worries about getting sprung).

On the down side of course, is the fact that for 40 hours a week I have been going slowly insane due to the lack of work and I think some of my brain cells have even died off with lack of use.

OK OK ...... I'll give you time to have a giggle to yourself about the fact that:

a. you didn't think I could lose any more brain cells
b. why is the last 6 months any different to the rest of my working life
c. insert own comment here

Anyway .... I have been lured back to my old employer. Something I am very pleased about. Won't go into the detail about why I left to start with but basically it was a BAD move. So at the prospect at going back and starting a new career is very exciting. It is also only 20 mins from home (although I have to tackle the Monash car park in the morning) but if I can leave early enough in the morning, I should avoid most of the traffic.

Of course the downside is that I will actually have to work quite hard and unfortunately visits to nurseries will be postponed to weekends ... but, it's a price I'm willing to pay.

Oh .. and the other cool thing (no, not the weather ... literally) is that I have been given permission by my other half (yes ... he actually wears the pants in the relationship ... except for 'pants off Friday') to get my motorbike licence and buy a motorbike.. which I will do by this time next year.

So .. woo hoo!!! Very very excited about that as I have wanted one since I was a kid.

So for those in south east Melbourne ... I'll give you plenty of warning when I get on the road. :-)

#1 Regret

For those that have previously built or in the process of building a house, there are always the 'I wish we had thought of that' or 'Dam, I wish we put an extra one of those in there'.

While there are a few of those niggly, not very important regrets, there is a HUGE one that has to be rated as the number 1 regret of this decade.

NO AIRCONDITIONING!!!

[insert angry face here with a gutteral growling sound]

'We'll be fine' we said ... 'we've lived with no air con for years now' ....

Well dam it ... I want air conditioning!!! I'm getting older and crankier and a bad night's sleep due to the heat doesn't help the situation at all.

Quite simply, for the saving of a few thousand dollars during the build ... I can only say 'We're idiots'.

Must be off now ... my sweaty fingers are causing concern for the laptop.

A cute baby and a cool looking deck

Some piccies!

And here is the reason for our trip to Brisbane ... our gorgeous new niece, Grace. Got to be the 4th cutest kid in the world (behind Sarah, Tim and Chris of course).

The deck fairy

We have just spent a lovely 4 days in Brisvegas (although the weather was crap) attending a christening.

Arriving home very bleary eyed and tired at about 11:15pm last night, we pulled up out the front of the house and I admired how beautiful my petunias were growing ... how many roses have come out over the weekend .... and then the front step/deck caught my eye. It was finished!!!!

I pointed it out to John and he said "oh great .. the deck fairy has been".

It was a great surprise but we still can't work out how our fairy got into the shed to get the wood and finish it off!!!

It looks absolutely fantastic .. he has done a brilliant job. Can't wait for the driveway to be done now... hurry up concretor!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now if we only had a paving fairy, life would be almost perfect.

Winged Rats, The tale of stumpy the Pigeon

Howdi,

I was sitting at the train station the other day, watching a nearby asian couple fed a growing flock of pigeons on the platform. When I sat down, a group of them came over to me looking for a feed.

Now I hate pigeons, they befoul the cities statues, they carry diseases, they are in effect winged rats and I feel more should be done to get rid of them. The only thing that stops us is that they are perceived by many as 'cute' with people feeding them at every oppurtunity (sorry bout the spelling F7). Its weird because you wouldnt see people feeding rats now would you?

I was just contemplating stoving the boot into one of them when I noticed one of them was different and was hobbling about. Closer inspection revealed that the bird had lost all the toes on one foot, leaving only a stump where his toes would have branched out from his leg.

I christened him 'Stumpy'

As much as hate pigeons I couldnt bring myself to inflict further injury to a disabled pigeon, I figured life was tough enough for him already.

So I kicked one of his mates instead.

J

It's finally happening ....

the driveway is going in mid November.

Woo freakin' hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cannot wait to finally get this done. I think it will really make the front look better and hopefully compliment the garden and paths.

Of course our 'fly by the seat of our pants landscaping techniques' have made it all come undone yet again when I realised that my little garden bed around the letterbox will need to be extended to the deck area. Of course the plus is that I get to go to the nursery and buy some more plants!! Just hoping that my little hedge plants will survive a move .... lots of seasol, love and talking to should do the trick.

Show us ya' deck

Not quite finished ... but almost there.