more tidying up

Sorry I forgot the camera. Today at Lisa's I moved things around in the living room, made pikelets for lunch and sorted the plastics cupboard. Carolynn worked in her room filling the new drawers. Lisa cleaned the bathroom, toilet and then started on her room. She found and moved out the cot but her bed was full of clothes when I left at 4pm ish( with the cot mattress.) Ian, the landlord, called in to check Adam's reports of mould. He will replace the bathroom fan but thinks the mould is due to the number of people in the house, the lack of circulated air, overcrowding. He congratulated Lisa on what she manages to achieve. He will try to find the key to the windows so they can open the windows on a sunny day. I brought in the washing and put out the last load so more moisture in the air to try to dry the washing.

Tomorrow I'm going at 8.30am so that Lisa can take Carolynn to the dentist at 9am without the little girls. We'll continue the clean up while Adam is away although he said Pat may bring the trailer when they return on Monday to clean up the yard. Not holding my breath on that one. If Lisa can manage to sort her room the passage is next job in line. Couldn't fit the panels for Jared's room in the car but he is private as long as Daria can be kept out. I'm joining Probus for lunch at the Manchester Arms. I'll call to try to get my heater checked out in the afternoon. Ian, Lisa's landlord, will get a new fan for the bathroom and fit it sometime next week.

I have the Wool Show Tuesday and Thursday and then on Friday and Sunday. The Red Hatters have a cocktail party at Strathfieldsaye on Saturday night, but I have a ride so just need to get the cooking done. That will be a busy week and I turned down the opportunity to have a boarder from the Sheep Show for the weekend. Off to Ballarat to see John Ives on Monday and will go to lunch at John and Kerry's then home. Next week should be quieter???

Update from us

As usual, it's been a while since we posted anything on the bandwagon, so I thought I'd give a bit of an update. This week has could have best been described as Hellishly busy. After a few weeks of not much going on at work, suddenly a client came to us with a massive job and a really tight deadline.. today being said deadline, and I'm writing this over my lunchbreak while awaiting any more feedback from them. Unfortunately, this was also the week in which I've got two Iaido demos.. one on Sunday, and the other yesterday afternoon. This basically meant that the last few days I've been starting around 6 or 7am so I can get the work done and also so I could leave early Wednesday for the demo. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but the sum result is I'm pretty tired :)

So the demos. Yesterday afternoon Takeo and I were at a big park in Adelaide for a half hour or so. We did some kata together, then faced off against each other with Takeo attacking and me defending.. then we did five each alone (we were clapped at the end!) and finished with some bamboo cutting. The crowd actually built up to be pretty large. Cheryl has posted photos, and I'll chuck a couple in here.. you can see it's fairly sparse in the first one, but by the end there's people behind us watching as well. The demo Sunday should be a bit less stress.. it's just for my Dojo in Reynella, so myself and a couple of students will do about 3 kata each and that will be all.

If you want to see all the photos you can see them here.

We hung around at the Moon Lantern Festival after the demo to eat some delicious Korean food and watch a few of the shows on the main stage. Oscar also tasted his first ice-cream.. which was Cheryl's ice-cream, but he didn't want to share ;) We got it off him when we offered him a banana instead.. he loves his fruit!

Oscar is growing up so quickly and learning a lot. He's gradually adding more words, some from us (like "nan" and "up") and some from childcare (like "ta" and "more") and some he just seems to pick up himself. He started saying "nose", "mouth" and his favourite "eye" suddenly one day. He really likes to mimic us too.. sometimes you wont realise you're doing something (like scratching the top of your head) until you see Os doing it too.

He's becoming much better at feeding himself.. some foods are easier than others of course, but he loves using a spoon, fork and knife when he can. He also loves reading books.. I think that's his favourite quiet time activity. Sometimes he'll even sit down and look through the books himself. We play a lot, he loves chasing and hiding games, and really likes exploring outside. He can get a bit quiet and shy with new people, but I reckon it takes about 20 minutes for him to get used to them (and it took about 2 minutes with Sam :))

We're looking forward to seeing Mum and Nana next week, even if there is a fair bit of cleaning the house still to be done. I'm getting Wednesday and Thursday off work (which I appreciate even more after this week) and then Friday Cheryl and I will go out for a few drinks with friends to celebrate my birthday. Gotta make the most of the experienced babysitters :) Monday is a public holiday too! It's going to be a good week :)

Hmm.. I think that's it from me. Hopefully Cheryl can pop on and say how her work is going, and anything I might have forgotten. I'd better get back to work!

Bon voyage, Dayna

We'll be thinking of you in Korea this week Dayna. I hope it is a fantastic experience for you and lots of fun even if it is work.
Lots of love
Mum and Dad

BellyWatch: Week 39

Hey all.. well, we're down to the last two weeks before the due date, which means it could be any day from a few weeks ago to about a month from now. This means we don't tend to make plans, and I jump whenever my phone rings at work :)

Cheryl is still feeling good, although occasionally the baby finds a spot to poke that makes her uncomfortable... and of course at that point he decides it's a great game to just keep on poking that spot. Still, she's managing a walk every day of around a kilometre, as well as keeping up the various stretches and other exercises that are recommended.

In an effort to improve my fitness I've also managed the occasional walk to the train station in the morning.. it's around 4 - 4.5 kilometres, which means to catch the train at 7:30 I have a fairly early morning. It's a good walk though, mostly uphill :)

Apart from that we're pretty uninteresting I'm afraid. Just generally kicking around at home, staying cool in this stupid weather and not making plans for any long trips.

What has everybody else been up to since Christmas?

Decorating and cleaning

Hey all,

We finally got the rest of the decorations for the baby's room this week. It's a collection of vinyl stickers of birds in flight.. we stuck them up this weekend on the main blue wall. I've put some pictures up on flickr so you can have a look.. although they were pretty tricky to photograph, so the wall is a different colour in each shot. It should give a fair idea of how it looks though.

Today we hired a carpet cleaner and picked up quite a collection of sludge from our carpets.. we mainly wanted to do the baby's room and the lounge, but we had a bit of time so got some other areas cleaned as well. It's very rewarding to look at the disturbing brown gunk in the bottom of the machine and know that at least now it's not in the carpets any more :)

That's about it from us for this weekend.. now we're off to a much deserved dinner at a Japanese restaurant on the beach. Huzzah! Cheryl has planned something secret for next weekend that doesn't involve cleaning or looking at baby furniture, so it should be a refreshing change.. I don't know what it is though. Should be fun :)

BellyWatch: Week 27

This weekend Cheryl officially entered her third trimester. We took some photos. It may look like she's really pushing her stomach out, but that's just how her back is.

So I guess we're officially in count-down mode now.. it's no longer "27 weeks in", now it's "13 weeks left". We've still got a fair bit to do - the most pressing of which is to organise a car seat from the RAA, or we wont be able to take the baby home. But apart from that we have supplies to buy, not to mention furniture.. we've ordered a cot, but we've still got to find a little chest of drawers or bookshelf or something to put a change-table on top of.. and of course the change table itself.

Such fun :) Time for a trip to Ikea methinks.

We did buy a pram on the weekend. A friend was recommending the brand when they found one on eBay that was actually being sold in Adelaide. I sent a message through to the seller saying we'd like to have a look, and she gave me a call - turns out she lives about 5 minutes away from us.

So we headed over there for a bit of a look, had a practice pushing it around, opening and closing it to make sure it was all easy enough, and then bought it from her straight away. It's a nice little pram, a Peg Perego Pliko P3.. they retail for around $600 - $700.. I was a bit taken aback with the cost of prams to be honest... But yeah, second-hand we got a good deal. It obviously sits back for a baby as well as being upright for a toddler, and our friends said theirs has lasted several years.

Cheryl took another video while I was at Iaido on Sunday, this one is even freakier than the last. Check it out at my website

Painting and Belly Watching

Hey all,

Just a bit of an update. We've started painting the baby's room.. you now all know the gender, so I don't mind showing you the colours :) We've got a light blue for most of it, and then a feature wall in a nice bright green. You can see photos of the progress here. The plan is to finish it off tomorrow, on our public holiday (huzzah!).. assuming I don't sleep in until 12 like I did this morning ;)



We also took a few photos of Cheryl for the week 24 BellyWatch. You can see them here.

We've been looking around for a cot and all the trimmings for the last couple of weeks.. we thought we had found the perfect one at Toys R Us (on sale no less), but unfortunately they don't deliver as far as Morphett Vale and we had no way of getting it from the city to our place.. and the local Toys R Us doesn't have it. Ah well, back to the drawing board. Assuming we can get the painting finished this weekend all we have planned for next weekend is steam-cleaning the carpet so we should have some time to look.

My general plan is to have the room all completely finished before you guys all visit in December, so we have a bit of time still.

Excursions

Yesterday and today we had an excursion to the Discovery Centre. Today was an easier group but I'm worn out after trying to keep watch on 25 children. We did have eight adults for each group, but it is still tiring and no coffee! this year we had a sound show (not impressed with the presenter who knew he had kinder children and demonstrated but didn't let them join in) and the Planetarium.
Next week we'll have party and dress up days on Wednesday and Thursday so that will be two more tiring/trying days. Then it's holidays for two weeks. we may go to Coffs but not until the second week as Cheryl and Warwick will be in Brisbane until then their house was almost sold but the deal fell through so we still have a base in Coffs. Cheryl said lows of 12 and highs in the 20's at the moment. Sounds good.
All well here. I'm going to Echuca with Lisa and Carolynn on Saturday for another comp.

Flashback... Dublin and Catania

I've just recently uploaded these photos, so I figured I could write a little bit about them. :)

I'd planned my trip to Dublin for a while.. I was going over to see my friend Paul (he lived next door to me in Halls). But then a last-minute work trip to Catania cut my weekend short. So rather than having a weekend in Dublin, I had one whole Saturday.. and then a few days in the south of Italy (with warmish weather, so I won't complain *grin*).

I met Paul in Dublin on Saturday morning - he had to go off and do some singing, so I wandered around the city for a while. I went and did a tour of Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells (amazingly intricate designs that were drawn with bone and stuff), had lunch in Temple Bar (at a wholefoods market.. tasty food!) and then wandered my way out to Kilmainham Gaol (and did another tour).

I caught up with Paul again in the afternoon and we had tasty tapas dinner, went home and dropped off my bag and then headed back into town for a Halloween Party (Paul dressed up as a zombie pirate.. I just went as a demon - they look like normal people *grin*)


Sunday morning I headed to Catania.. It was some trip.. I got a bus from near Paul's, flight to London Gatwick, waited there a while before getting another flight to Florence, a quick change over and the flight to Catania. The change-over between Florence and Catania was a bit stressful. Actually a lot stressful! On arrival into Florence we had to go through immigration - somehow I ended up at the end of the line (not at all sure how!!). Anyway, the result was that they were calling my name over the PA.. I scurried to security near the gate - but had to go back and get a boarding pass (they couldn't give me both when I checked in at Gatwick because the systems are strange..). I ran back downstairs to the check-in desk, the girl didn't understand that I was meant to be on the next flight.. she thought I wanted to buy a ticket or something (she didn't even understand my printed itinery). So another trek across the hall to the ticket people and FINALLY I found a lovely woman who understood what I needed, phoned the girl at the check-in desk and off I went to get my boarding pass. Back upstairs, through security (although they stopped me because they thought I had water in my bag!?), and eventually I made it onto the plane. *phew*

Catania was interesting.. the city itself seems like it was beautiful once.. but is now run-down and decaying.. I was staying in a hotel out of town - not far from the village above.. it was pretty .. especially at night and when the sun was shining. :)

The meetings were a bit interesting.. but it was better once they were finished. :) I wandered around Catania, got rained on a LOT, had the best hot chocolate EVER! It was a thick Italian (of course) hot chocolate with some Grand Marnier in it.. mmmmmm... Andrea made it for me (and even paid for it..heheh). He's a chef/waiter at the little cafe I went to to get out of the rain. He ended up coming to the castle with me and I had fantastic pizza dinner with him one night too (the picture at the top).

All in all, not a bad few days (and so long ago now it's hard to remember it). *grin*

...and I'm still not up to date yet.. *grin*

new ceiling

After a busy week we now have a plaster ceiling in the sunroom. Dad sanded it today and went to buy some ceiling paint. He hopes to get the undercoat on this weekend since the weather is to be cool. He's very tired at the moment.
I've just finished my first full week. I'm glad to have Fridays off. I did my aquaexercise, walked down to the library then to work to sign my roster. Laundry is up to date including some from work because I forgot to send it home with a parent. A good day off.
When is the house warming?
Great to talk to Glenn this morning. I tried for Dayna as well but no answer. Is she still in Glasgow? Maybe on the job arranging volunteer tutors and schools.
Heard from Val Loomes last night. All good now, but Peter has been sick and has finally given up smoking.
Lots of love to all

new hair, new job

just wanted to let everyone know that as of next Feb, i'll be coordinating Lab in a Lorry for the North-West of England.

Lab in a Lorry is run by the Institute of Physics and is essentially a mobile physics laboratory. A 10 tonne truck travels to schools where volunteers run lab sessions with school students (11 - 14 years old). My job will be getting it all to happen: booking schools; liaising with the lorry drivers to make sure the truck gets there; recruiting, training and organising the volunteers; welcoming students to the lorry; making sure the experiments are working (and maybe coming up with some more); handling any media.. i'm sure there's more that i just don't know about yet. *grin*

Because the job is for the North-West, I get to stay in Manchester (where I have good friends and a comfortable place to live), and the extreme project management for this position is going to be good for me... as long as it doesn't kill me. *grin*

I've got a lot of ends to wrap up in my current position before February, so I think I'm going to be busy over the 'break' (not to mention that I'm going to Budapest from 24th - 28th.. woohoo). But I hope to be able to chat to all of you sometime in the next couple of weeks - on Skype would be good, just let me know when you'll be around.

The weekend once more; where'd the week go?

The weekend has come around once again, and I just wonder where the week went!

Work has been okay, fairly standard really. I still don't have a confirmation of what I'm going to be doing in the long run (well, I know which project I'm on, but I've asked for a clarification of roles because at the moment I seem to just be passed tasks from every which-way). I spoke to a guy I'm working with on configuration management (no, not quite a management position) and he said he'll probably be taken off that ... which will just leave me? That could be fun, as much as work can be called "fun".

The real fun, of course, happens after work and on the weekends. We've finally got the phone line and Internets (it's not a big truck, it's an inside joke) connected, although even that has been an effort and a half. We still need to talk to our ISP about the speed -- 500kbps instead of the (theoretical) 8Mbps. Yup, that means our connection is 1/16th the speed it should be; the speed we're paying for. Regardless, having the wacky web has meant Dee can do her job application-y stuff from the comfort of home. We hope to have some good news by next week ;-).

This last week we have been very good with our pennies -- planning to live on one salary for as long as is needed (although I'm hoping not long -- Dee said she's going to buy herself a Wii when she gets a job, yay!) -- and it's actually been really, really good. For one thing, we've not been eating out (much cheaper) but best of all we've been cooking from scratch! There are so many markets and stalls around here that it is in fact cheaper to just buy the raw ingredients and put it all together ourselves, including growing our own veges out on the balcony. The food really has been awesome -- we even managed a barbecue one fine night. Yup, loving the balcony.

More cheap-osity -- about half-way between my work and home is a college or University or something, because there's a little street that is always filled with trendy students eating (and being students, drinking) on the cheap from one of the student-focused eateries. One day this week I met Dee there and we sat on wooden bench seats eating hamburgers with every type of salad we could find, all for £3.50. Okay, it doesn't sound cheap when you do the conversion back into Aussie dollar$, but it really is (consider that a normal sandwich from the bank canteen -- subsidised canteen, mind -- can cost around £2.80).

This weekend is a long weekend, but because we're being cheap (and because there is a mass-exodus from London on long-weekends) we're not going to either Brighton or Stonehenge, which were our two preferred options. Instead, we went to the London Science Museum (Dayna would approve, ;-))! For the cost of a bus then the Underground back home (too tired to walk to and from the bus stop :-D) we saw all manner of crazy science stuff -- the history of medicine, flight, computers, mathematics, stuff about the future of physics (the Large Hadron Collider will smash particles at higher energies than have ever been done before, hopefully shedding light (heh heh) on the nature of gravity. Dee thinks it will blow up the world. Hmm).

Today we're off to the markets again -- what a surprise! -- and then may catch a Horror movie in Leicester Square as it's the annual FrightFest here this weekend. Guess I better go jump in the shower, huh?

More photos in my new Life In London photoset, including a couple of the new apartment.