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!