... since my last post! Doesn't time fly. Haven't been up to much, but at the same time, we've been flat out! No photos, unfortunately, due to lack of coordination. There might be some on the camera that I've not had a chance to get off yet, so watch this space. Just some of the things we've been doing:
* Mum and Dad came to visit for 2 weeks. It was a last minute holiday, with Mum only booking the flights a week and a half before they arrived. Was great to have them up again, and I think they really enjoyed their stay.
* While Dad was here:
* He fixed my good drill which I thought I'd wrecked when installing the new door. Turns out there was a dodgy connector right inside the drill, which had overheated and burnt out. 5cm of new wire, and it's as good as gold again!
* Fixed our main bedroom air conditioner, which stopped working 6 months ago. I'd had a friend of a friend look at it, but he was on his way home, took one glance and said we'd be better off just replacing the whole lot with a brand new one, gas plumbing lines and all. Thankfully Dad was able to replace the busted contactor, and now it works a treat again!
* Almost finished hanging the new door. We cut/drilled the hole for the deadlock - I just need to mount the strike plate. Because the walls are besser blocks, and the door jambs are steel, drill bits get chewed out very quickly. So we ended up using my Dremel grinder with a cut-off wheel to cut the steel jamb, and then a masonry bit in the drill to eat out enough of a hole.
* Replaced the exhaust fan in the bathroom with one that's not quite so fally-outty any more. Because the original hole was so big (which was why the existing unit was falling out), I've had to No More Gaps up the holes, and paint the patches. I put the first coat on last night, but I think the paint had gone off, so might need to invest in a new 1L tin of ceiling white that's actually, you know, white...
* Installed an exhaust fan in the toilet. It started out as a combined fan/light unit, but an installation discrepancy saw us using the template for the bathroom fan, which was massively larger than the hole the combo unit needed. So after 3 emergency trips back to Bunnings, we now have a separate light and a fan the same as the bathroom.
* Installed dimmer switches on the lights in the living room
* Fixed the toilet, so now it doesn't run constantly, and it flushes normally again.
* And there was something else, but I can't remember what it was! I doubt they'll ever come back again though, not if he thinks he'll spend all his time working again!
* We did a couple of day trips with Mum & Dad, with one Saturday heading up the Gillies to the Yungaburra markets, then onto the Chocolate and Cheese factory for morning tea. From there we headed to a military museum outside Atherton, then up to the Skybury coffee plantation for lunch. We put the 4WD to good use and called in at Davies Creek on the way home to check out the waterfall (with Mum managing to fall on a gravel path), then back home past Kuranda and down the range. I've decided that I want one of the Studebaker 6WD trucks that they had at the museum (Click here to see what I'm talking about!), as it was just plain cool. In a cruel twist of fate, Dad tells me that Uncle Stewart happens to have one that he needs to offload. I'm very tempted, but for the fact that it's 2000kms south, and I don't have anywhere to keep it.
UPDATE - Photos of the museum can be found here!!!
Life in FNQ - Matto & Jess: Mareeba War Museum
* Jess and I have both been crook, but have recovered now. Jess had a cold that ended up as a throat infection. It took her 2 weeks to get over it, at which point she gave it to me, and I ended up on antibiotics for 2 weeks. I then gave it back, and she ended up with fully-blown Tonsillitis. Not fun! The Dr sorted it all out though, and she's been fine again for the last few weeks now, so all's well again.
* Last week, we found ourselves in Brisbane again. I went down on Tuesday (Melbourne cup day - didn't win a cent), and stayed with Jamie while working a couple of days in our Bris office. Was good to catch up with the Bris team, and I always enjoy my time working there again. Got the chance to catch up with Scotty (dinner at Jamie's Tuesday night), Paul (dinner and drinks in O'Malleys in the city Wednesday night), Scotty (dropped into Casa Del Anderson on our way back from the coast on Sunday) and Stevie & Ros & Erin (crashed at their place on our way to the airport to come home on Sunday).
We both had the Friday (the 7th) off work. We picked up our hire car from the airport when Jess flew in, and were pleased to score a free upgrade to a Nissan Tiida, which, as it turns out, is a beautiful car to drive. The sore point was being stung $12 for not having the fuel tank full on return, despite it being 1/4 of a tank down when we picked it up. All that's on top of the extra insurance, but hey - I guess that's how they make their money.
We spent the day up at Grant and Sam's place, playing with Jesse & Lilly & Fraser. We scored the title of coolest uncle & aunty, and most annoying brother and sister-in-law, with presents of water pistols. We finished off the day with a BBQ on the back lawn up at Mum and Dad's place, where we stayed the night. We tried out the new video camera, and have a bunch of footage of the kids, however I'm having trouble playing it back on the computer, unfortunately. I don't know if it's the computer trying to play it, or the camera having trouble capturing it. Either way, I need to work it out before we take it O/S, so we can ensure we get good footage over there. I suspect that the FullHD video is just too much for my poor old PC to handle, but having just sunk $$$s into more RAM and a 1Tb HDD for the video editing, I'm reluctant to pour too much more into it. We'll see.
UPDATE - Photos of the kids can be found here!!!
Life in FNQ - Matto & Jess: Toowoomba Visit
We had a wedding on the weekend down on the Gold Coast, hence the reason for the trip, and we stayed down the coast on Saturday night (the 8th). The place has really grown on me, and now I'm annoyed that we didn't spend more time down there when we lived there. The wedding itself was great, and the reception was lovely. Waking up in Surfer's Paradise with a 16th floor ocean-view is really something else.
UPDATE - Photos of Maureen's Wedding and Southport can be found here!!!
Life in FNQ - Matto & Jess: Scott & Maureen's Wedding - Southport
Um, what other news?
Haven't done anything further on our holiday yet - will need to meet with our agent to see how everything's coming along from her side of the fence. We also need to book our NY accommodation ASAP, as we elected to take care of that ourselves and save some money. I'm trying to talk Jess into a Nintendo DS to occupy us during the long flights.
I finally talked work into stumping up for a new phone and laptop, since they were both about 4.5-5yrs old. Despite both being in basically perfect condition, the phone's battery would only last about an hour off the charger, and the laptop was taking around 20 mins to boot up and log on of a morning. So I now have a lovely new HTC Touch Diamond phone that uses the high-speed Telstra NextG internet to sync my work email/calendar/contacts, and a spankin' HP Elitebook 6930p laptop.
The phone is wonderful, although the full touch-screen interface takes some getting used to. It's not without it's faults, but for me I think it's pretty much the perfect device. I'm looking forward to trying out the GPS-enabled Google Maps when we're overseas! The laptop's brand new, having only arrived on my desk this Monday. So far, I'm absolutely loving the extra power, and the Vista/Office 2007 combo really does work well, despite an initially steep learning curve. The downside is that the laptop itself feels like it's carved from a solid block of aluminium - I wouldn't be surprised if it's twice as heavy as my old 12" Dell D410 machine. That said, the HP is a 14" widescreen, and has an internal DVD writer (external on the D410), as well as fancy features like a built in webcam, and so on. So it's not entirely unreasonable for it to be heavier.
And that brings us up to today, basically!
We've got nothing planned for the next while, which is a lovely feeling. We'll be having Christmas in Cairns this year, so unless anything pops up between now and then, we probably won't be back South again before we head overseas. So now the emphasis just goes back to trying to talk everyone into coming up for holidays and to visit!
I'm trying to get back to riding the Sprint more often (took it to work today), but my neck, back and head are not quite co-operating. Despite talking about it for the last 6 months, I want to start making time to play some more golf, and might even invest in a couple of lessons to re-cover the basics and make sure I'm not learning any bad habits. It's probably been over 12 months since I was at the driving range, and over 6 months since I was out on the grass, so I'm itching to have another round, or at least go and belt a bucket of balls.
On top of all that, I've been hunting around for a cheap way to set up a bit of a home gym, as I'd like to start doing some light weights training. Nothing fancy, just an inclining bench, and a barbell/dumbells set. That will let me get started with the basics at least. Unfortunately, like everything, the cheap stuff isn't good, and the good stuff isn't cheap. Being in Cairns doesn't really help - eBay is next to useless here, and all the pawn shops have prices basically line-ball with new gear. I've got my eye on the following:
Celcius Standard Weight Bench
Rebel Sport 50kg Weight Set
Anyway, that's about it from me - hope everyone's well - catch you all later!
14 years ago
