The new toilet's crap.

You may recall that I mentioned in passing a couple of weeks ago that we'd finally replaced our dodgy old toilet cistern with a brand new one, and how it had changed our life. The old one would run constantly, wouldn't flush, wash old, yellow-y and just generally crappy, so to speak. When we put the new one in, there was much rejoicing. It flushed, and then stopped flushing. It didn't leak or run constantly. It was a 2m x 2m box of heaven on earth.

So imagine my disgust when the new toilet started to run into the bowl. Not much at first, but eventually getting up to an audible trickle at night times. I thought we just fixed that? And thanks to the very old and perished rubber coupling where the cistern meets the pan (that I didn't replace with the new cistern, but knew at the time that I should), every time you flush, you get a couple of drips of (thankfully) fresh water trickle out the back, as the rubber has cracked.

As annoying as that was, I refused to look at it. It was a brand new toilet, it could bloody well fix itself for all I cared. It had been doing that for about 2 weeks, until...

...

... we came out yesterday morning, to find the toilet room flooded out. Not only was it now running into the cistern constantly (again), it had developed an external leak somehow, and was dripping water out onto the floor. It hadn't been doing it the day before, so something must have let go over night.

So we turned off the water, flushed it all dry, mopped up the water as best we could, and left for work. Last night, I pulled it all apart again, and think I've found the problem.

You see, when I put the new cistern on the wall, it's mounting points were wider than the old cistern. No worries - I could measure how much wider it was, so I simply centered the new cistern against the old one (so the outlet lined up nicely), and mounted it there. The issue, however, is that the old cistern was never centered on the wall. It was slightly offset - so the new one was also offset exactly the same amount.

So last night I re-measured everything, and centred the cistern on the wall. I previously had checked that the bowl was centered in the room (it was), so with everything centered and measured, it should all line up, and there should be no twisting forces applied to any of the joins. Therefore, seals should be able to seal, joins can join, and water should stay inside.

Certainly with the cistern centered on the wall, the toilet seat lines up a lot better, and isn't needing to be jammed in one particular spot any more.

But what I had failed to notice when doing my measuring was that whilst the bowl itself was centered in the room, it wasn't square. It's set on an angle. Which is why the old cistern was offset slightly - the flush outlet tub from the cistern needs to come out from the wall at an angle - not at 90-degrees. So basically now the cistern doesn't line up with the inlet to the bowl, because some dodgy Fred-in-a-shed home handyman plumber couldn't be bothered to get the bloody toilet bowl centred and square before bolting it to the concrete, and (here's the kicker) then tiling around it.

So I don't know what to do now. I've put it all back together with the cistern in the new (centred) spot, and it's not leaking externally, which is nice. It's not running internally either at the moment, but I expect that to develop like it did last time. I'm going to need to replace the rubber coupling sooner rather than later, but short of replacing the pan and then re-tiling the toilet area, I'm not sure what the next step actually is.

Bummer, eh?

Under Pressure

Last weekend, Trev bought up the big petrol-powered pressure cleaner, and the big walk-behind cleaner. It's a beast of a machine, and makes mince-meat of cleaning concrete and pavers. It had been two years since we had last pressure-cleaned our patio and garage, so was well overdue.

With the wet season up here, any exposed concrete in the sun quickly has a layer of black slimy moss/mould grow on it, and it can get quite slippery. Plus, it just looks bad. So the driveway and the pavers at the back really needed a clean. The carport and patio area don't get the mould on them (due to the "pavecrete" coating, as well as lack of sun), but they do get a lot of dirt and mud tracked in on them during summer, and over time they look dirtier and dirtier. You can clean them off with a hose and a scrubbing brush, but it's a lot of effort, and it doesn't get as good a finish as the pressure cleaner. Not to mention that the pressure cleaner is a lot more environmentally friendly compared to using soap or chlorine to clean the concrete and mould, which runs straight into the stormwater drain, and into the creek across the road.

So, once we'd moved all of the outdoor furniture off the patio...


... it was time to get stuck in. The big walk behind disc cleaner makes the job so much easier and quicker. We still need the high pressure lance to do the edges, as well as any fiddly bits (the big rocks around the garden edges, the paved steps, etc) - you've just got to be very careful when using it, as it would pull skin off any errant feet quicker than you could say "ow - my feet!". It's so powerful that you have to even be very careful with it on the pavecrete coating on the concrete - too close, and the pressure will blast it clean off the concrete.


Badger thought the whole process was wonderful, especially being able to bark at the petrol engine on the pressure cleaner whenever it was started. Of course, he was just thinking of when we had finished, how he was going to find the biggest pool of mud he could, then track it straight back onto the concrete...

The process is not helped by whoever did the concreting at our place. The back patio (as shown above) doesn't drain to the far corners, as you'd expect. It drains towards the back sliding door of the house. Then, from there, down to the BBQ area. However, once down into the BBQ area, it doesn't drain towards the drain - no - it drains back against the drop off, and pools there. Same in the carport. Instead of sloping down from the back of the carport and out the driveway, it actually drains from the front back towards the inside back corner, where it pools against the house. There's even a handy little lip at the front of the carport to prevent it from being able to run forward and out, and frustrates you when you're trying to broom/squeegy it that way.

Whoever set up the concrete and screed it deserves to be shot. If they had taken an extra 2 minutes to set the slope of the slabs in such a way as to drain water in the appropriate directions (and lets face it - we do get a fair bit of water up here every now and then), then cleaning these areas would be a joy and a breeze. But because they didn't, this job is always a royal pain. Not to mention the potential damage to the house from draining water towards it and holding it there. To fix it however, we would need to jackhammer up the existing concrete slabs and have them re-laid with the slope in the right directions - a job that would be so prohibitively expensive as to render it not economically practical. The carport I'm not too worried about - that's where my ensuite and an extra bedroom are going in my Future Plans(tm). But that back patio makes me cringe whenever I think about it.

The joys of buying a second hand house, and needing to live with other people's shortcuts! At least we now have beautifully clean and sparkly concrete and paving. It really does look a lot better. And with the trees down the side gone, it will be much easier to keep this way now.

A Week at the Creek

Well, back in Cairns after 10 days in SE QLD. After Easter, I jumped straight down to Bris for three days working out of the Brisbane office, then out for a week's training session at Murphy's Creek.


The firm has bought a 40 acre property down by the creek, and has set it up as an offsite "school" with twin-share accommodation. So myself and 11 other staff converged on the place for a week to live out there and learn. It was actually a really good week, based on Stephen Covey's book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". The first two days were spent with a facilitator from Franklin-Covey taking us through the proper 7 Habits training, and the last three focussed on where and how we apply these habits in our work as a legal practice. I quite enjoy personal development activities, so I had a great week.


Long days, however, with things kicking off at 7am and having planned activities through till 7-8 at night every night, with the vast majority of the days spent on dodgy plastic chairs in front of a projector and whiteboard. Needless to say, I was very glad to come home. I was lucky to go on the same course as two other people from our office here that I get on really well with, which made things a lot easier. The groups are drawn randomly from all staff Australia-wide, to allow people to mix and get to know one another. I've got some photos of the property, but have been too busy to upload them yet - will get them up ASAP - it's a lovely spot!


Being down in Bris for the few days before gave me a chance to catch up with everyone again, which was great. I stayed with Jamie, as usual, and really appreciate having somewhere to stay that's handy to transport, yet more friendly than sitting in a hotel room by myself. Hope I haven't outstayed my welcome with the amount of time I've spent there lately! On the Friday night Jamie and I headed over to Paul and Nehara's place for a BBQ dinner, and to talk about their upcoming wedding. We have heaps of stuff to organise, which reminds me that I need to ring Derrick back at some stage! I stayed at their place Friday night so that we could head down Saturday morning and get measured and fitted for our suits for their big day - another checkbox ticked off!


Sunday Jamie and I made our (belated, after Matt spent all morning reading a book) way to Toowoomba, and spent the afternoon with Mum & Dad, Grant & Sam, and the kids. Always fun, even if it is mayhem. Grant and Sam are planning a trip up here soon, so will be great to see them here, especially since Jess has missed out on these last few trips down, and misses the kids terribly.


After the week at the creek had finished, Dad came down and picked me up, and Mum, Dad and I drove down to Jamie's - saving me from the pre-organised shuttle bus ride. Main Roads had decided, in their infinite wisdom, to close the highway at Blacksoil at 5pm on a Friday afternoon to re-surface the road. Everyone was being directed off an exit, around a roundabout, then back down onto the highway past the roadworks. A stretch of road that normally takes 5 mins caught us for over half an hour as we crawled along. Still, it could have been worse, and since my flight was the following day, I wasn't stressed by the delay. After a quick trip to the airport on Saturday, and I was buzzing back home.

All in all, a good 10 days away, but I think I'll try in future to so shorter trips - the 10 days just left me drained and spent by the time I made it back, which probably goes a long way to explain why I've had the flu for the past few days. Everyone's telling me it's swine flu, so hopefully they'll quarantine me from work. that'd be nice!

Photos are now online!

2009-04-18, Mum, Dad, Grant & Sam & Kids

2009-04-20, Tiddalac

Congratulations, Brendan & Jess!

On Easter Sunday, the 12th of April, Brendan (Jess' brother) married his fiance Jessie in a beautiful ceremony at the Colonial Club here in town. After a week's worth of rain, and a BIG storm on the drive over, the clouds magically parted for the afternoon of beautiful clear blue skies. Couldn't have timed it better.


Jessie's son Brandon (yes - that makes two Jess's, a Brandon and a Brendan) was the ring bearer, and looked the part in his matching suit.


The party kicked on into the night, and a great time was had by all (even Kal).



And, of course, we can't forget the star of the show...


Congratulations guys - may you have many happy years in front of you!!!

2009-04-12, Bren & Jess's Wedding

Holidays - San Fran, and the Long Trip Home

Unfortunately for us, San Francisco marks the end of our epic holiday. But what a way to finish! Jess completely fell in love with San Fran, and wanted to go back straight away. I must admit, there was a certain charm to the city that I'd like to experience a bit deeper. It's a very pretty city, with the steep streets, the trams, and the bay right at your doorstep.

Unfortunately, it was also the "scammiest" city we'd been to, with homeless bums and just general people in the street trying to beg or talk you out of your money. The homeless were generally harmless, there was just a lot of them, and they all wanted a dollar or two. But it was the "professional" scammers that were the worst. We had a fellow come up and start talking to us, and we assumed he was a city official or something. Gave us a bunch of touristy stuff, then wanted $10-$15 each for his crap - SF stickers, and other such junk. So we told him he could have his stuff back, and didn't give him a cent. But it underlined the begging sub-culture that had become more evident the further north along the west coast that we travelled - if you touched anything that was thrust in your face, then you owned it, and you had to pay whatever the person then asked of you. Very confronting at first, but you quickly learned to simply ignore such people and look straight through them as if they didn't exist. You felt extremely rude to not even return a friendly "hello", but you knew it would lead to someone trying to get a "donation" for the work they do with street kids, or some other sob story that we fell for a couple of times. Hopefully the local gov will step up and do something about the issue, as it was our only mark against the place.

All that said, we still enjoyed ourselves immensely in San Francisco. We hired mountain bikes from the pier and rode across the Golden Gate Bridge, with a ferry ride back across the bay. We rode the trams across town, hanging off the running boards as they edged up streets too steep to consider walking up. We had a boat ride around the bay, under the bridge and around Alcatraz. We watched the sea lions that live at the pier. We visited the much vaunted SF Aquarium Of The Bay, and found it to not be a patch on the Monterey Aquarium that we had visited a couple of days prior. We bought a third suitcase so we could bring all our hastily-purchased jumpers back home with us, along with some souvenirs!

One thing that does deserve to be mentioned, however, was our hotel. At 5pm every afternoon, the manager of the hotel hosted wine tasting in the lobby. All guests were free to come and mingle by the fireplace and taste a variety of wines. Officially, it was one glass per guest per day, but the bar staff were happy to continue offering you different wines. It was such a lovely idea, and within an hour of arriving all manner of unrelated guests were chatting about their holidays, where they lived, what they had been doing, and so forth. I'm not a very social creature, but even I enjoyed this immensely. It really set this hotel apart from all the others we stayed in (along with the Hollywood Heights motel, where ALL the staff were happy and friendly ALL the time!)

Unfortunately, it was all over mere days after we arrived, and we were back on the big plane for the long trip home. 11 Hrs from SF to Narita. 4 hrs in Narita, changing terminals, and trying to work out whether or not we needed to collect our bags, clear customs, change terminals and re-check in, or whether we just needed to get ourselves to the right spot, and the bags would take care of themselves (ProTip - it's the first option, even though we were told by half a dozen different airport and airline people that #2 was what would happen). Then, finally, 7hrs from Narita back to Cairns, where we disembarked at 4:30 on an already hot and muggy Thursday morning, thoroughly exhausted and just happy to be home.

What a trip!

2009-02-12, OS Holiday - 8 - San Francisco, and the long trip home

Daintree dreaming

Last weekend we popped up to the Daintree for a visit. Friends of ours from work own a property up there, and were camping up there that weekend to get some jobs done. Having not seen there land since they bought it a year ago, we went for a drive to have a look around.

Berryl, their pony, was on the land when they bought it, and (through a long series of unfortunate and humorous stories) is still there now. She likes carrot, and will chase you around for a piece of bread.

Holidays - Driving from LA to San Fran on the Pacific Coast Highway

Lets get this out of the way first then, shall we? Yes - our trusty Mazda5 hire car did blow a tyre on the trip. Yes, it was probably my fault for not avoid a razor-sharp rock with enough gusto. Yes, I still loved the low-profile tyres and wheels despite this.

The tyre saga is actually still on-going, as we're currently filling out a claim for on our travel insurance to hopefully be reimbursed the US$200/AUS$300 special high-speed super-low-profile tyre that we needed to have fitted. If we had taken the car back to Hertz with the spare on, and got them to fix it at a cost of $1000, then the insurance would have paid out straight away, as it would have appeared as an insurance excess that we were liable for. But because we couldn't afford the time, and didn't want to be out of pocket as much money as Hertz would have charged, we arranged it ourselves (with some help from the lovely staff at the Holiday Inn at Monterey). As it is, they'd like us to fill out a claim form and sent it in "for consideration", so there's still a glimmer of hope.

Anyway, on to more exciting things!

When we left off last a couple of days ago, we were pulling out of LA after spending the morning at Santa Monica. With the Mazda's nose pointed north (Thanks to Mr Tedder's GPS that we had on loan - wasn't THAT a lifesaver!), we hugged the coast all the way to our overnight stop at Santa Barbara.


A more idyllic seaside escape you couldn't hope to find. No wonder so many of LA's rich and famous have weekend homes up there. It's also a hyper-trendy place, with hybrid cars and battery/electric buses to ferry you around. All this technology against a backdrop of the old pier, and the original unrestored buildings that abound in the town.

From Santa Barbara, we headed off into the rain on day 2. Whereas day 1 was fast, open, sweeping highway along the side of the coast, complete with surfers enjoying the swell; the majority of the driving on day 2 took us inland from the coast, winding through country backroads amidst farmland. We took an unmarked turnoff and winded along a seriously twisty and tight country road, only to pop out at a beautiful caravan park right on the beach, which sported a number of huge RVs that had somehow negotiated the drive in.

After a quick stop in a little town for the weirdest KFC we had ever had, it was back on the road for the short stint up to San Luis Obispo - our stop for that night. We arrived mid-afternoon, which gave us plenty of time to head into town for some sightseeing. The old mission building still stands on the creek, and the town centre is done up in old-style regalia, and makes you feel as if you've just stepped back a hundred years (or more).


Leaving SLO the next morning, we drove through rain pretty much all day again. The road bought us back to the coast, but the normally spectacular views were alluding us again, replaced with a sheet of grey and water on the windows. The rain thwarted our attempt to see the Hurst Castle, something which had been highly recommended to us. Unfortunately after taking refuge in the gift shop for half an hour, the rain was only getting heavier and heavier, so we made the decision to skip it and move on. So close, yet so far!

Missing the castle did give us some more time up our sleeve, which we cashed in 10 minutes down the road at the Elephant Sea Lion colony on the beach. We spent a huge amount of time there, watching these lazy giants sit around, whistle at each other, and throw sand on their backs.

As we continued north, the road became more and more severe, eventually clinging to the cliff face above the rocks and crashing swell below. The road itself was perfectly acceptable, but the location was majestic. Unfortunately, the environment, coupled with the rain, meant an inordinate amount of rocks had fallen onto the road. It was a constant battle to avoid them without jerking the car left and right, and as we saw above, wasn't always a battle that I won. Unfortunately sharp shale-y rocks and low-profile tyres are never going to get along very well. Despite changing the tyre in the mud and the rain, I at least had a spectacular view to console myself with.

Thankfully it wasn't much further into Monterey, which was a blessing, since our bright yellow "space-saver" spare tyre had numerous warnings not to drive above 45mph (~80kph). The car's handling characteristics, in the rain with one heavy steel wheel and super-skinny tyre on one side of the car, was interesting enough that I didn't feel the need to try that limit out. Thankfully the motel staff could recommend a local Goodyear shop (And provide directions to get there) who luckily enough had a suitable tyre they could mount up, which spared us the indignation of needing to drive all the way to San Fran on the spare.


Monterey was a beautiful spot, easily the biggest town of the three on this leg of the trip. Yet, at the same time it was very easy to get around, with the PCH dissecting the town, and making rapid transit from one end to the other very uneventful. That night we dined at a seafood place down by the bay, and experienced our first Clam Chowder. It was to be an experience we repeated later on in SF. Before dinner, we had managed to make the famous Aquarium before closing time, and managed to get around everything before they kicked us out. It was well worth the cost of admission, and have a huge range of very interesting displays. The jellyfish exhibit alone was breathtakingly beautiful. Especially considering that here in Aus, jellyfish are more associated with stinging you, rather than being a thing of beauty.

Our 4th day on the road started with a jaunt back across town to visit the Pebble Beach golf course, which is actually inside a national park! Along with it are a bunch of other golf courses (4 in total, I believe), and private residences both in the forest and on the beach. We were lucky to arrive at Pebble Beach and find the US ProAm just kicking off, and the course in full swing. Unlike the previous days on this trip, the weather was blue-sky perfect today, and the greens were immaculate.

Reluctantly leaving Pebble Beach, we once again hugged the coast as the open, rolling hills contrasted against the rugged mountainous terrain of the previous day. A brief stop at the Pigeon Point historical lighthouse provided some beautiful photo opportunities. We were mindful of the time, wanting to get into SF nice and early, and avoid any peak-hour traffic and to give us plenty of time to traverse the city and find our hotel. After another half-day of stunning beach-road driving, small towns and country roads through green pastures, we entered the great steel-and-concrete jungle that is San Francisco, where once again the GPS proved itself indispensable.

But that's a story for another day...

2009-02-12, OS Holiday - 7 - Driving the Pacific Coast Highway from LA to San Fran

TIIIIIIIIIIIMBERRRRRRRRR!!!!

Since we've moved into our house here in Cairns, it seems that all we've done is pay good money to get less stuff. And the trend continues!

We had a couple of trees in the back yard that were starting to become an issue. The one down the side, overhanging the patio:

And the three big (BIIIIG!!!) fishtail palms against the back fence:


The side-tree had a few problems:

• It would drop leaves 12 months of the year. An inordinate amount of leaves. Said dead leaves were constantly accumulating in our back patio area, requiring weekly clean-outs with the blowervac.
  
• It would drop seed pods pretty much year round, which really hurt when you stood on them on the back patio area (where 90% of them would inevitably end up)
• It would drop sticks and branches pretty much year round, which was just annoying.
• It was right smack-bang in the centre of my planned driveway into the back yard.
• It was rotting from the inside out. The roots were all rotted and hollow, as were the main load-bearing branches. At one point I turned around and staked my crowbar into the ground, and it disappeared down about 2", where it had struck into a decaying root and just kept going.
• Nothing would grow around it, especially grass.

Which is a shame, since it was a nice enough tree, and provided plenty of shade. But it had to go.

As for the fishtale palms, they were just huge.


They had massive seed-pods hanging from them, which would drop seeds and fruit all over the back lawn, which quickly became like shotgun pellets to your shins whenever mowing was required (IE, every week in summer). Due to the sheer size of them, they were starting to concern us. Despite being right on the back fence, if they were to fall towards the house, they would be able to crash through the back patio no worries at all. And the weight of them would ensure that there wouldn't be much left afterwards. Heck - even one of the fronds that has died and falled to the ground is difficult to drag out to the front, and takes up pretty much the entire garden bag once chopped up!

Before we could get the tree loppers in though, we had some work to do.


The garden down that side was set up to continue up to the base of the tree, as you can see above. Inside the garden was a bit of a mess of ginger plants (really pretty flowers, and as hardy as anything, but a little dishevelled to look at), and further up (behind the tree in that shot) was what we think used to be a cubby-house. 4 coppers logs set in concrete, with left-over pavers set underneath. All of this would need to be cleared before the men arrived, as they couldn't be working with garden and rocks in their way, and their stump grinder wouldn't take kindly to munching on concrete blocks!


The ginger was easily cleared out. We had sprayed it with roundup the week prior, so hopefully we won't have to deal with much regrowth in what will now be lawn. The paving and coppers logs proved both harder and easier than we had thought. The pavers were difficult because they had a layer of crap over them. Weeds growing through, old palm fronds that Badger had dragged out of the garden and left there, dropped leaves and sticks from the tree - it was all just sitting on top of the worlds dodgiest paving job. We had borrowed the ute for the day, so I set about breaking the pavers out and digging them out, and throwing them behind me on the lawn. Jess picked them up and threw the broken dodgy ones into the ute, and kept a stack of reasonably good ones for a future project.


All going good, until we'd finished getting all the pavers out.

And discovered that there was a second layer underneath that, and this layer consisted of house bricks. Where THEY came from, I've no idea. Our house is constructed from besser blocks, not bricks, so they definitely weren't left over from that. Somewhere in our neighbourhood is a house that's missing half it's wall.

So just as we thought we were finished, we realised that we were only half way through, and that the half we had done was considerably easier (and half the weight) of what was still to come. By the end of the day though, we had them all dug up, and with the ute resting on it's bumpstops, we took a trip to the dump and thoroughly confused the dump attendant. Of course, we then had the privilege of unloading the ute by hand into the "Building Rubble" section - what I would've given for a tipper tray that day.

Once the garden area was cleared, we were able to move the rocks that form the garden edge back towards the fence to allow for a good width for vehicle access. The 2 shrubs against the fence were cut right back to ensure they don't crowd over the new driveway and encroach into the new space. Hopefully they'll bush up again quickly.


This only left the coppers logs. We decided early on that we would probably leave the two that were set against the fence, since they're not in anyone's way, and the less digging and mucking about the better. The fist log (the one closest to the tree) was difficult to get at with tree roots and such in the way. We finally had a breakthrough when we realised that the log itself was moving slightly within the concrete. A couple of sharp hits to the concrete with the breaker bar, and it shattered into three or four pieces! The log then lifted straight out, and the individual pieces of concrete would then be lifted out one at a time. Thank goodness for whoever did the dodgy concreting job originally!!!

The second log was much the same story, except after breaking the concrete away, the coppers log actually snapped off down at the base of the hole, where a small amount of solid concrete remained. I was happy enough, so we just removed as much concrete as possible, and will bury the remaining piece for someone to dig up and puzzle over in the distant future.


So after three weeks of manual labour every night and weekend, we were finally ready for the big day, which was yesterday (Monday the 6th).

They arrived just after 7:30, and got straight into it. We left 20 mins later, just as they had backed their chipper and truck through our front fence. Whoops. They know we know, 'cause we were standing right there when it happened, so will be interesting to see if they give us a discount on the bill because of it. It's OK - they pushed the broken pailings back into place, and wedged the corner post up with a brick. But the pailing are still broken and will need to be replaced, and now the gate is even harder to close than it was before, so it's all a bit annoying.

Upone arriving home, this is the sight that greeted us:






It's, um, much more open! We were expecting it to look a little bare and a little exposed, but nothing like this! We've regained so much space down the side of the house, and with the fishtales gone, it's really highlighted how large some of the other trees in the backyard are. For instance, the row of palms in the photo above were always considered to be pretty small. Looking at them now, the smallest one is about 5m tall, and they go up from there! So will be some more action here in the near future, since if we leave them too much longer they'll be too big for us to handle ourselves, and we'll need to call in the experts again.

All in all we're very happy with how it's turned out. We've got more work ahead of us - we've got to clean up all the woodchip from the stump grinding, and then get more crusher dust to level it all out and provide a nice ramp for the vehicle access. The the garden behind it will need to be cut back to provide access, and cleaned up since you can see it clearly now! All in good time though.

For now, we ducked down to Bunnings and picked up some lattice that we're going to attach to the fence, and some creepers to grow up over them. Hopefully this will give us back some of our privacy on our back patio now that the shrubs have been cut back and the tree removed.


The creeper is Orange Trumpet Vine which should be quite pretty when it's flowering, is nice and bushy, and relatively fast growing, yet not too adventerous and will stay relatively confined to it's bit of garden. Eventually this section of fence will need to be replaced with nice new colourbond panels, as it's pretty wobbly as it is, but this should tide us over until such time as funds are available for that.

Check back later in the week - we hope to have the lattice panels up and the creepers planted!

Holidays - LA, Hollywood and Santa Monica

From the glitz and glamour of Vegas, to the wild majesty of the Grand Canyon, then back to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood!

I had originally not wanted to spend any time in LA. The city didn't hold anything for me. To me, it was just going to be a big, dirty, dangerous, scary place. However, when the time came to leave, I was trying to think up excuses to stay! LA, and Hollywood, was the real surprise package of the trip for me. I came in with such low expectations, and left with it cemented as one of the best places we stayed. The people were all so nice and friendly, and everyone just wanted to have a chat.

As we only had 2 nights in LA, we wanted to maximise our time exploring in our immediate area (2 blocks from Hollywood Blvd - right in the thick of things!). As such we declined the numerous offers of tours and such, and focussed on getting about on foot. Despite walking too far one day, we got to see a great cross-section of the area, from the glitzy star studded Hollywood Blvd and the Chinese and Kodak theatres, past the beautifully kept suburban homes of Melrose Ave, right through to the grimy and serious light-industrial areas, with the auto mechanic shops and other such blue-collar endeavours.

It's worth noting too that we never felt anything less than safe at any time of the day or night. We didn't venture too far at night by ourselves, but we certainly had no trouble walking the couple of blocks from our hotel down to Hollywood Blvd, or 4 blocks each way up and down the street.

Alas, after our 2 nights were up, we had to hit the road and begin our trip north. We had already picked up the hire car at LAX when we arrived, and had stashed it at the hotel for the previous two days. We headed out of the city via Santa Monica Blvd, down to Santa Monica beach. We stopped and had a wander around - down to the pier at the beach, and up through the town to do a bit of shopping. Since we had spent the last 2 days sweltering in 30 degree heat with jeans on, I splurged on two pairs of shorts. This proved to be an unwise decision, as the rain set in the further north we went, and the temperature plummeted, and I didn't get more than a day's use of them! Santa Monica itself was picturesque, and would be my pick of places to live, assuming you could afford it!

2009-02-12, OS Holiday - 6 - LA, Hollywood and Santa Monica Beach

Busy Busy!

I know - I'm slack - no updates this month yet. Have we been sitting around slacking off then? Not likely!

Truth is, we've been flat out, both at work, and at home. Some of the things we've done:

An impromptu week in Bris for Matt. The call came late one Friday afternoon, so I booked my tickets and jumped on the plane on Monday morning. Was a good week, both work and personally. The main reason the whole team was assembled was a day offsite to speak with the CEO about the current issues he sees in the firm, and how he wants IT to come up with some ideas. I really enjoy these days, as it gives you a window into the high-level operations of the firm, and the various challenges that the board and management team are facing. I'm confident that we can come up with a plan to address the concerns that were raised on the day, and as an upside, it will have very significant benefits in pretty much every other area of the firm as well, not just the main legal practice.

Personally, it was great to catch up with the family, with Dad and Mum coming down from Toowoomba one evening with Sam & the kids, and Grant coming up from his block TAFE at Logan. We had a great time playing with the kids - little Fraser is 7 months old now, and sitting up and laughing and just being very interactive. He's almost crawling - in fact I'd be surprised if he's not already by the time I write this. Lilly came down to the train station to meet Jamie and I on our way home from work, and skipped all the way home. Jesse was quite taken with his San Francisco cable car toy we bought back, even to the extent of foregoing a trip in the Uncle Jamie's car with Granddad so he could stay and play. I've got the photos at home, just haven't had a chance to upload them.

Thanks go to Jamie for letting me crash at his place with no notice, and for posting me my camera and other stuff that I forgot and left behind (which is the other reason for a lack of photos lately!). Also was great to catch up with Paul and Scotty and have a few pints of rum at O'Malleys, as is our custom.

Home - New Toilet. Yup - sounds pretty boring, but in reality, is very, very exciting. Our old toilet:

• Would not flush properly. 9 times out of 10, you'd need to hold the flush button down for 30 seconds to get all the water out of it. If you just pressed it in, it would stop flushing as soon as you took your finger off it.

• Would not half-flush at all. See above.

• Would run constantly. No matter what we did, we couldn't get it to seal shut properly. So all day and night it would run, and every 5 mins would make a SHHHHHH noise as it refilled the cistern. Some times it was worse than others, depending on how the last flush went - sometimes it would flush constantly until you thumped it to stop it.

• Was very, very loud. The above wouldn't have been a problem if it was quiet. But it was loud enough to startle you awake if you were sleeping in our bedroom, at the other end of the house. No joke on this one!

• Would leak. Nothing nasty - just the water feed into the cistern would drip if the tap wasn't in EXACTLY the right position.

Our new cistern is just a relatively cheap one, but it's a good brand, and should last us a while. I had my eye on a nice vitreous china cistern, but it was twice the price, and after all, it's not exactly something that you have on display, is it?

The good news is that it's quiet, it's quick to refill, and both the half and full flush buttons actually work! And it's not constantly wasting water on us. Amazing how something so little can just make your life so much less stressful!

And anyway, isn't it pretty!

(Answer - no - it's not pretty, it's just a toilet)

Family - Brendan's Wedding. Jess' brother is getting married in 5 days on Easter Sunday. So there's been a bit of arranging around that. We haven't had much to do at all, really, but since the Impretzel is going to be one of their wedding cars I needed to give it a good detail on the weekend. Also, I'll be videoing everything, so have had to ensure that my tripod has been dug out, and that I'm a bit more familiar with the new digital camcorder.

Home - Trees. - Photos coming soon to a blog near you!

Home - Sinkhole. - As above!

Bris again in a week's time. - A couple of days after Easter, I'm heading back down to Bris for a few days working in the Bris office, then a week of offsite training at Murphy's Creek, near Toowoomba. Have planned to dedicate some time during the half-week I'm in Bris to get together with Paul and go over some planning for his wedding to Nehara in August. Should be a great day, but since I've been appointed Second Best Man ('cause let's face it, if I was the Best man, surely the girl would be marrying me?), we have more pressing things to arrange, like the Bucks party and other such alcohol-fuelled adventures. On my way to Murphy's creek, I hope to be able to call in on Grant and Sam and spend the morning with the kids again. Should be a blast!

General Work Work. Even since we returned from our holiday (8 weeks ago now), I've worked every weekend. Mostly just either a single day, or two half-days, but it really gets you down not having any time to "switch off" and get away from a computer. The week after I returned, we had our email system completely destroy itself one weekend, which necessitated a couple of big, BIG days to get it back up and running. On top of all this, we've had a lot of small after-hours maintenance stuff that's been needed to be done at night through the week, which usually counts for a couple of hours each week night. So all strung together, it's left me feeling very run down and just generally sick of work. But hey - what's new there? And it's probably a better situation than what a lot of other people are facing, with not enough work to go around.

House - Pool and shed quotes. I'll just leave that one there.

Stay tuned - more to come soon! Including the photos from the West Coast portion of our holiday!