Take me back to you, it's been a long time.....

If there's one thing that Jon Stevens does well, it's scream. If the Noiseworks concert a couple of weeks ago is anything to go by, Brisbanites the right side of thirty* are pretty good at screaming right back at him.

A couple of months ago, while listening to some old music late one night, The Man mentioned that he'd like to see some of the old bands live. I commented that at least one of them had to still be playing somewhere.... We happened to be listening to a Noiseworks song at the time so they were the first band I checked....Lo and behold, they were playing at the Tivoli on the 7th of November.

So we sent the Boy off to Grandma and Grandad's for the evening and toddled off to the Valley for a night out.

We installed ourselves about 10m from the stage and stayed put right through the opening acts - Move Trees, (who I quite liked - go to their MySpace page and listen to 'I found you') and Taxiride (who were okay - but the only songs I enjoyed were the ones they'd originally released as singles, the others were totally forgettable, and they seemed a little too self-interested to really be taken seriously).

And then the lights dimmed and the dulcet tones of "Touch" filled the hall. I have to admit I was doing a fair amount of the afore-mentioned screaming. Not the "aaah aaaaaaaaah Jon Stevens is soo sexy I want to have his babies aaaaaaah aaaaaaaaaah" type of screaming that seemed to be coming from all around us, emanating from women who really were old enough to know better, but the yelling out all the lyrics I could remember at the top of my lungs type of screaming.

We had a ball, right up until the strange jumpy woman to my left realised that she really couldn't do a proper job of groping her boyfriend with the one hand she had free and rectified this situation by flinging the empty beer bottle that was occupying her other hand onto my left foot.

A short walk, (or hobble) and the purchase of a Move Trees EP later we were in a taxi on the way..... home (we're getting too old for staying out that late) to drift off to sleep with No Lies playing over and over in our heads. Aah.

All together now... No lies, no lies, do it again.....

* the high side. Of course.

Wake me up when September ends

Okay - it's obviously not an entirely accurate metaphor, as September ended quite some time ago, but in the immortal words of Green Day .....

as my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when september ends

Four years on, this week still hit me like a freight train. Like all things, I know it will pass.

Still, it's a good time to take a moment to take stock. I am grateful for what I've learned, I am grateful that I got to spend part of my life with a person as amazing as Doug. I am grateful for my family and my friends. I am grateful for a workplace that (mostly) understands that I'm a bit of a crazy person this week. I am grateful for the wonderful man and beautiful, incredible (and occasionally exasperating) little boy I now have the opportunity to share my life with. I am reminded that out of tragedy has come new friends, new experiences and new love.

But wake me up next Tuesday, will you?

Is that the ABC news theme? Excuse me while I do an interpretive dance....

On Tuesday night we went with our friends Adam and Son and some friends of theirs to see hilarious British comedian Bill Bailey. Right from the very beginning when the friendly voiceover told us to turn off our electronic devices (including microscopes and large hadron colliders) because they would interfere with the venue's navigation system, through to the end, where Bill was derisive of my artfully hand-crafted tinselly worm (more on wormy later), then sang Love Song, it was a treat.

My favourite bits? Well, mostly everything..... but here are a few samples - a dissection of Australian TV news themes which involved dancing with rhythmic gymnastics ribbons; discussion about the Large Hadron Collider and the implications of a black hole under Switzerland; an entreaty to go into the nearest branch of UBS and chat about Nazi Gold; a nice happy song about an emo who works in a coffee shop and self-harms using broken plastic spoons; a jazz version of God Save the Queen and the Imperial March from Star Wars; a wry musical comment on the "variation" of tone achievable with a didgeridoo.... (The Man's wondering here if I'm outlining my favourite bits or the whole show.....)

But back to the poor derided worm. Influenced by the gifts left on the stage for Ross Noble when I saw him earlier in the year, I decided that a comedy show entitled Tinselworm deserved a hand-knitted Tinselworm.


I flung wormy onto the stage at the end of the show and when Bill saw it he picked it up and said "Is this the best you can do, Brisbane?" before showing us the "worm" someone in Canberra had given him.
The Canberra contribution was clearly a completely substandard "worm", being as it was obviously a neon-pink store-bought snake wrapped in a sad strand of blue Christmas tinsel. Adam assures me that Bill would have gotten backstage and realised that my worm was clearly superior, and appreciate it in all its hand-knitted glory. In my opinion derision is so much funnier than appreciation, so I'm pretty happy. I just wish we'd broken the "no electronic devices" rule and gotten footage of the worm incident on a mobile phone.... I'll have to keep an eye out on youtube!

Fiji here we come

Yay. The holiday is finally here. We fly to Fiji tomorrow morning. Off for one whole week of ....well, as close to nothing as we can possibly manage. (Although we seem to have packed quite a lot of stuff for doing nothing - mostly my fault). Photos when we get back!

Nobody here but us chickens

I'm home alone this week. The Man is in the States for an important work meeting and the Boy is staying with Grandma and Grandpa. It's been quite nice to have my own space for a couple of days but it is a bit lonely here, especially at night. And boy does that bed get cold when you're used to having another body there to warm it up!

Only two sleeps to go, as I told the Boy on the phone this evening!

Oh - and Kempsey Mum, if you're reading, I've tried to email you but it keeps bouncing, telling me that your email address doesn't exist on your server. I don't know what's wrong there!

Karma Chamilia

About a month ago I went shopping with my good friend D and we each bought a charm bracelet. Mine is a Chamilia brand but it's similar to a number of other brands on the market (Pandora, Biagi, Bacio, Fiera, etc). D and I bought a few beads each and my Sister and her husband gave me another beautiful blue glass one for my birthday. I will get new beads slowly over time on special occasions.... like Wednesdays :) . What do you mean Wednesdays aren't special occasions?!

A rush of blood to the.....wallet. (aka the day I became an art collector)

Long story, but some of you will know about my dog Keg, who has been living with Mum and Dad in Sydney since I moved to Brissie just over two years ago. Keg is a typical 4yo male Staffy and as such is under everyone's feet (including poor old Buddy, Mum and Dad's aging Rottweiler/Kelpie/German Shepherd (?) cross who has bad hips and can ill afford being barrelled by a rapidly moving lump of dog). Everyone loves him but it's probably not the absolute best situation for him to be living in.

Noone ted him to go to the RSPCA, because we couldn't be guaranteed of any home for him let alone a great one, so Dad has been mentioning Keg to everyone he knows in an attempt to find the perfect new Mummy and Daddy for my Keggy.

Well, finally we found one. (note that I'm using we here in the sense that I'm not involved at all) A friend of Dad's found a friend of his who has had Staffies before and wants another one but didn't want to go through the puppy stage again. Phonecalls and arrangements were made and Keg will be flying up with the good people of Virgin Blue on the 18th of August.

Keg's new Mummy is an artist. Her name is Lyn Barnes and she lives in Quilpie with her husband Jack and some horses. You can see some of her art here.

Lyn has an exhibition in Brisbane once a year and it opened on Wednesday. (it's on at the Graydon Gallery on Merthyr St in New Farm. If you're in the area drop in and have a squiz) She invited me along so we could meet each other. I had looked at the artwork on the website and while it's all quite nice, I felt that none of it was really my thing and I would just go, say hi, stay for a little while and then go. As is probably usually the case, the art was all much more impressive in person than it was in the photos. I met Lyn (who's lovely - Keg's on a good wicket there I think) and started to walk through the gallery until I came around a corner and stopped dead. It was a pastel drawing of spoonbills in a tree at Stonehenge (the one in outback Queensland, I don't think the English one has Spoonbills...) and it's gorgeous.


I walked around that gallery about three times, each time hoping as I came around the corner that someone had bought that drawing so that I didn't have to keep arguing with myself about whether I'd buy it. After the third time when there was still no little red dot on the name plaque, I went and called Dad. He convinced me that if I loved it, and could afford it, then I should buy it. Done. Mine.

I'm now an art collector.

I just hope there's enough credit left on my mastercard.

Am I bovvered? Yeah - I think I am a bit.

I just watched the last episode of the fourth season of Doctor Who. On the whole I really enjoyed it, a few plot holes and it was cheesier than a big bag of Dorito's, but it was fun.

However, (and this is going to expose a major turn-around in thought) I was a bit disappointed at the way they left poor Donna. Catherine Tate has grown on me amazingly during this season to the point where I think Donna may have been my favourite Doctor's companion of the new series. I understand that they couldn't just leave her running around the universe in the state she ended up in but I thought leaving her that way was sad. And someone give Bernard Cribbins a Bafta. (or another Bafta if he already has one or more). The man's a brilliant, understated genius.

But with that out of the way, hurry up Christmas.

Is there a collective noun for birthdays?

We have a birthday cluster in my family at the moment. Yesterday was Doug's birthday and the Man's brother's birthday. Today is the birthday of The Man himself. (Yep - The Man and his brother were born two years and one day apart). Also, yesterday, my sister N gave birth to a gorgeous little boy, so we have a fair bit of celebrating to do. Happy birthday everyone!

My nephew was born after what was apparently a fairly long labour for nowadays. Not having actually been through labour myself, I think that any period of time would be fairly long, so my hat's off to Sis. Well done. It's a pretty impressive thing, making a person, so we're proud of her and her hubby. The Nephew is apparently eating well and pooping well and sleeping well and being generally extremely well behaved so that's got to be a good thing. He was 8lbs 10 ounces which sounds like a very healthy weight to me.

Despite the fact that today was not my birthday, I did receive a present of sorts. My wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills arrived. It seems to be lovely, although I am having some trouble with the "Classic" yarn I bought to make a Cleckheaton cabled jacket. Due to the plying and twisting process (I'm not certain of the exact terms), the twist is in the opposite direction from most (all?) other yarn I've ever used. I'm finding that as a result, it is untwisting with the action of my hands as I knit with it which is meaning that it's really splitty on the needles and I have to keep going back and fixing missed stitches where I've worked only a third of the yarn! It looks nice knitted up though so I should have a nice finished product provided I take a little more care in the construction. The colours are beautiful too, and the other yarn I got (Rustic) has the twist in the "correct" direction so I won't have the same problem with it.

I've missed blogging quite a lot of interesting stuff in the last month and a bit so I'll have to catch up soon.

to sleep, perchance to dream

You tend to realise how much you take sleep for granted when you can't do it. Lately there's been so much work on my plate, and no-one to share it with, that I've been logging on from home after most work days and on most non-work days as well, and I've been thinking about work ALL THE TIME. In the shower, on the loo, putting out the washing, and in bed. And I've had a lot of time to think about it there because I haven't been sleeping. The Doc put me on some sleeping tablets and I've been catching up but I need to start trying to go it alone. I'm still tired though.

The recruiting for a developer for my team hasn't been going well. We're not exactly swamped in wonderfully qualified applicants. I hope we get some more resumes in soon.

I've bought my Grandparents' car and will be going down to Sydney in two weeks to collect it and drive up with my Mum and Dad. I'm looking forward to it, but hoping that I will be awake enough to share the driving.

I've been knitting a little bit...I even picked up some stitches on the eyelet cardi. Nothing photo-worthy though....

Fever....In the morning, fever all through the night.

Everything started out well yesterday. We got The Boy all packed up and drove him up to his Grandma and Grandpa's place near Caboolture, and then took him round to play with his cousins at Sandstone Lakes. We drove The Boy's cousin and his girlfriend (don't worry - large age range in cousins - the one in question is 22) down to South Bank and then came home to get ready for Leisl and Nick's wedding.

We got dressed and ready and the taxi arrived on time and we reached Somerville House with half an hour to spare. We looked at the map and decided that the best way round to the chapel was along Vulture St. When we got there we found that the chapel, while indeed on Vulture St, was high above the street and we couldn't see any way to get there, except a footbridge over the railway line, around the corner. Around the corner we couldn't find any way onto the bridge that wasn't locked, and had to walk back around, at which point we found that a gate below the chapel was open. That little adventure chewed up 20 minutes and left us both a little hot and bothered. (The Man more than me - his black suit had to have been much hotter than my strapless dress, even if the lined synthetic satin made it feel by that stage a little like wearing a shower curtain).

Anyway, we were there with plenty of time before the Bride arrived, for a lovely service.

After the service we walked to the nearby building where good friends have a riverside apartment. They had booked the poolside bbq area for us to all have a few drinks and nibblies before catching the ferry across to the reception.



The reception was nice, but, early on at least, there was a little too much alcohol and not enough substantial food. (I suspect that's a hazard of cocktail receptions) I ended up having a little bit too much to drink and having to miss the Bride's speech (sorry, Leisl, The Man tells me it was really good!) To cut a rather unpleasant story short, The Man decided we would have to go home early, I composed myself long enough to get home in the taxi and we were home by something like 9.30pm.
The phone rang at 3.30am, when I was still alcohol-affected enough to take a little while to work out what that ringing noise was so that I could fumble for the handset. It was The Boy's Grandma - he had woken up with a fever and a headache, coughing up blood. The Man told them to call an ambulance.
So it was a little bit panic stations for us this morning, getting ready to drive up to Caboolture in the middle of the night, me feeling absolutely awful, The Man trying to work out how long it was since his last drink, and whether he would really be okay to drive. (in a way, thank goodness we'd come home early, he never would have been okay if we'd been out partying until 2am).
As it turned out in the end, The Boy had a nasty fever and wasn't feeling very well at all, but the blood (on the pillow, and assumed to be coughed up) had actually come from a wound he'd scratched in his ear. He refused to go in the ambulance and so the paramedics stayed with him until we arrived and left him in our care. He slept until about 6.30am and then insisted we go home, so off we trotted back into Brissy, me feeling only slightly better than I had three hours previously.
Quite understandably, we spent the rest of the day at home resting. I've felt seedy for most of the day but I'm just tired now, and The Boy's fever's spiked a couple of times during the day (40.1 at one point) but he seemed to be okay when he went to bed.
About the only other thing that happened today was that I lost $13,000 playing poker on Facebook. Thank goodness it's pretend money. I think that has proven that I have no skill at poker and virtually no luck either. Don't ever set me loose at a casino. Please.

A serious case of blog-block

Hi. I'm still here! It's been a while, hasn't it?

I've been really busy. Work has been really really hectic, and I've been getting home and collapsing. I've had a nasty chest cold for the last month or so, and while I got over the first few days of feeling so awful I couldn't sit up for more than 5 minutes straight, I haven't been able to get rid of the last vestiges of congested chest and nasty hacking cough. Lovely.

Those of you interested in the knitting content may be expecting lovely photos of a finished Eyelet Cardi. Well, .... sorry, but I've had a serious case of cardi-block to go along with the blog-block. I got as far as the bit where I have to pick up stitches to do the front and neck bands and I stopped. Actually, I started to do one of the front bands and it looked awful so I stopped. The poor cardi is still floundering and feeling unloved in the knitting drawer.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been knitting. Oh no. I needed something to take my mind off the fact that I would have to go back and finish the dreaded picking-up stitches at some point, so I've made two bags and a shawl.

Booga 1

Sophie


Start of Booga 2

The shawl/wrap


This was my first experience of knitting a shawl - indeed my first experience of knitting lace on anything bigger than a bootie. Of course,I completely cheated. I needed this in a hurry for a wedding this afternoon so it's probably the most basic shawl pattern in the universe: cast on 50 stitches, knit 1 row, purl 1 row, *k1, yo, k2tog to last stitch k1, p1row, k1row, p1row, repeat from *. I used the tubular cast on and a cast off I got from Grumperina's blog, here. (see under the first two photos of socks on feet). Oh - It's made out of nearly three skeins of Cleckheaton Studio Mohair, in black, and it was 180cm long when I cast off. It came out to shorter than that after I blocked it as I stretched it out sideways quite a bit. It started out narrower than I wanted it.

Unfortunately it's too warm now to wear a shawl, and probably will continue to be so for the rest of the evening. I'm going to take it with me anyway, The Man says that I'll be really annoyed if it does get cooler and I didn't take it, and he's probably completely right.

Okay - time to finish getting ready - first thing is to clean up my toenail polish. My standard way of polishing my toes goes like this:

1. Slop polish all over toenails, not caring too much about whether what you're getting polish on is toe or nail.
2. attempt rather inexpertly to clean up the dreadful mess you made in step one.

As you can see - I'm between steps one and two.


Happy easter everyone!

Wow

I got an overall E (Exceeds Expectations) on my performance review. I really wasn't expecting that - I thought maybe an E on a couple of items but an M (meets expectations) overall. I'm very very happy.

Wish me luck

I have my performance review this afternoon. I think I've been doing an okay job, and my boss told everyone that I've been doing a "great job under difficult circumstances" at the quarterly company meeting on Friday but I'm still nervous.

(Sometimes the devil's in the details)

Even worse, I've got to wait until 4pm today, and my boss is often so busy that things get put off..... so I may have to wait till tomorrow.

Oh well, the butterflies will probably do wonders for the diet!

A cardi update

The eyelet cardi is nearly finished.

This is what it looked like last week before the sleeves and main ribbing were finished.



I decided I needed new needles to finish off the sleeves and thanks to the lovely Janette at Yarns Galore my 3.5mm/30cm Addi Turbos arrived on Friday. I finished the sleeves yesterday and gave it a wash/soak to set the stitches before picking up for the front and neck bands.

Here it is soaking in the baby bath on the floor of the shower.


Here is the pile of towels waiting to dry the cardi, with the bottle of handy dandy Martha Gardeners Wool Mix in the eucalyptus fragrance that induced The Boy to walk past asking "what is that smell?"


And here is the cardi itself, drying on the dining room table.



When it's all dry, I've just got the front bands, the neckline and a couple of tiny underarm sleeves and the ends to weave in, then she's all finished.

Hey-lah, hey-lah

The Man's back. He had a ball in Niseko. I'll put up a link to his video on YouTube once he cuts it together and puts it up there.

The Boy's back too, he had a great time in Adelaide but is really glad to be home.

I'm really happy to have them back.

The end of the long weekend

This is what it looked like when I went to leave the house this morning. I waited until it stopped.


I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. I've had a really good break, and I'm quite a lot more relaxed than I was last week, but another week or so off would be nice. Oh well, just got to make the most of what I've got.

I really enjoyed my day out at the galleries on Sunday. I slept in and bummed around the house for most of the morning and got to the Gallery of Modern Art in time to have lunch and watch the hula-hoop display in front of the GoMA RiverCafe.
The very lithe Miss Ra-Ra Sparkle (I kid you not), sharing her hula hoop prowess.
The Warhol exhibit was great, I loved the fact that it included examples of his "time capsules", and Interview magazines and film works as well as the screen-prints, paintings and drawings.


My forearm's 15 minutes of fame. Surely my pass-out stamp can be considered Pop Art?

I wasn't tremendously blown away by anything else at the GoMA, but I did quite like a series of photographs of a Chinese artist sitting waist deep in a river, stamping the water with a traditional wooden stamp of the symbol for water.

In a move quite derivative of the Yarn Harlot, here is the Eyelet Cardi visiting the inflatable pink poodle in front of the State Library.


Speaking of the cardi, I got up to finishing the eyelet rows by Saturday night but noticed a mistake and thought I could drop a couple of stitches back to the error, fix the mistake and redo the stitches back up to the current row.

I'm good, but I'm not that good.

I had to rip back all the eyelet rows, fix the error and do it all over again. I'm still happy with what I've been able to get done this weekend though, and this morning it looked like this.


I think it fits - but it does need to be just a leetle bit longer!


I had a phonecall from the intrepid traveller this evening. He's having a great time in Niseko - apparently the weather has been really good from his point of view. Not too much new snow, but sun and blue sky today. He said that he quite liked just being able to cruise around and he's not desperate for bucketloads of snow. He's got some good video too, apparently, so I'm looking forward to seeing his little ski movie.

A whole lot more than I'm looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.

A Lady of Leisure

The Man left for Niseko yesterday. I went with him to the airport, jammed into the back of the taxi with his box of skis resting across my lap, and kissed him goodbye at the "Passengers only beyond this point" sign. Jal offerred a nice little tool that allowed me to look at a little image of a plane on a map representing the last position report of his flight for his international flight so I was able to check that a couple of times during the day. His flights were all more or less on time so I hope he was actually on them. If all went well he would have arrived at his accommodation at 12.30am Niseko time (1.30am here in Brissy) and would have bunked in for not much sleep before brekky, finding his way around and getting to his lesson at 10am.


So, with The Boy still in Adelaide with Lalla, Lisa, Andrew, Holly-doggy and the chickens (he told me on the phone the other day that "the chookies lay their eggs every day"), I am a lady of leisure this weekend. To enhance the effect, I've taken Tuesday off from work, and due to data network changes at work this weekend, I'm not even able to log in from home to do any work. Gee. Looks like I will be forced to relax. Bummer, huh?



Last night I curled up on the lounge with my knitting and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and worked on my Chicknits Eyelet Cardi, which I started on Thursday night.

Here's the little nook I set up for myself


I'm very happy with the Eyelet Cardi so far. I've got heaps done on it, which is mostly due to knitting in a taxi, knitting while waiting (aaages) for the Airtrain back to the city, and a whole evening knitting in front of a movie last night. It's in Jo Sharp DK wool in Oak, which I got on eBay last year for $34. I didn't know what I was going to knit with only 10 balls, but this should just scrape in!


And no, I haven't finished PeaceBaby, but I'm up to the i-cord edging around the neckline. I decided to knit it on rather than knit it and sew on later, and it's going quite well. Well, except for the fact that I started the wrong way and I have to pull it all out and start again, but I'm getting the hang of it.

So I'm about to head off to start the weekend. The plan?
Today: Head into the city to do some shopping, then back to Paddington to get my haircut, lunch in Paddington and then probably home to do some washing and knitting. This evening I'm going to see Sweeney Todd with a friend.
Tomorrow: Visit the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Gallery of Modern Art
Monday: don't know yet, I'll think of something.
Tuesday: Doctor's appointment, going to Medicare to cash in the millions of Doctor's receipts I've collcted over the last year. Maybe some more shopping with all my hard-won Medicare refund money.
Wednesday: Back to work but let's not think about that yet!

ZZzzzzzz

I'm tired. Utterly mind-and-body-drained, curl-up-under-the-doona-wake-me-when-it's-February tired. Normally I'd get through a day like today with a can of V and a big cup of coffee but I'm avoiding caffeine as its been exacerbating some symptoms that I think are side effects of the corticosteroids, so I'm on my own.

It might help to explain my mindset if I tell you that I was inordinately happy to find that variety pack of cereal boxes in my desk drawer must have had TWO boxes of coco pops so there was one left for me in addition to the one I'd taken home for The Boy last week.

Sugar just may be my saviour.

Only one more sleep until The Boy goes to Lalla's. He's very excited.

I took some photos of my recent knitting and when I loaded the photos onto my laptop I noticed that I'd never uploaded the photos from the construction of The Boy's cubby on the 30th of December. Lalla and Poppy came down from Caloundra with the car and the ute, completely loaded up with cubby bits and proceeded with lots of help from David, and The Man and a little bit of help from me, to construct most of a gorgeous cubby. Rain on the 31st put the kybosh on finishing it, but the construction team (minus The Man and I) resumed work on the 2nd of January and got all but the back wall done.

So it went from this:

To this:


To this:
So far, The Boy has stubbornly refused to move out of the house into the cubby, but we can only hope. I know that it doesn't have a back wall yet, but that's got to be good for ventilation, right?
The eagle-eyed among you may have realised that the photos show not only the construction of a cubby, but the disappearance of a pair of cocos palms. The nice Energex men came during the week and removed them as they were too close to power lines. We are happy about this. I love trees, but these were ugly and dangerous - the huge heavy fronds would die and hang around on the trunks for ages resisting all efforts to pull them down until they would suddenly decide to fall without warning, always in danger of pulling power lines down with them, and sometimes in danger of falling on someone's head.
But it does look a little bit bare there now.

My friend the NullPointerException

Ahh. The life of a partly competent java programmer. I spent way too much of today struggling with a NullPointerException in some code I'm working on. Of course I started by trying to fix what seemed to be the sensible cause of the error, but of course it turned out to be the totally obvious, I was stupid to even think it would ever work part of the code that was causing the error! Oh well, it's fixed now.

Time to move on to something more exciting. KNITTING! I'm knitting a lot for N and P's unborn little boy - a couple of pairs of Cargo pants, Anny Purl's Peace Baby jumper and a pair of booties are at various stages of not being completed. Photos later, I promise. I haven't taken any yet. Oh, and I also made a "wine sock" from Yarn Magazine, issue 1, for Lisa's birthday.

The Man and I passed one of the greatest milestones a relationship can confront on the weekend. Assembling self-assembly furniture without dismembering each other. It was only a little bookcase from Officeworks but I see it as a good omen. :)

The Man and The Boy are counting down the days until their respective holidays. The Man is going to Lalla's this Sunday and will be going with her to Adelaide for Lisa's birthday. He can't wait and keeps trying to insist that there are less sleeps than there actually are, and then getting angry when we correct him. He seems to think that if he can just insist hard enough, he'll really succeed in making there be less days between now and Sunday than there actually are.

In truth, I think The Man would like to do the same thing (reduce the number of days) until he goes to Japan on the 25th. He did a test pack of his cases on the weekend to see how much weight he had. He's quite restricted on his internal flight from Tokyo to Sapporo, and with his skis taking up 11kg, he needs to make sure he can fit in some clothing! He's on the web every evening checking out the weather and ski conditions in Niseko.... I hope it's good for him over there when he gets there.

Just so I wasn't left out, I applied for a day off today. Just one, but I've tacked it onto a long weekend so I get 4 days off while the boys are away. I'm going to go to the movies to see Sweeney Todd, get a haircut and maybe a massage or a facial. I've just found out that I'm getting a sizable tax refund and a nice little pay rise so I think I can splurge a tiny little bit!