Matt's Year 12 Formal

The last event of the school calendar was the Year 12 formal.

Matt spent the day helping organise the after-formal party.  Their previous plans had fallen through because the venue they had booked couldn't cope with some of the guests being under the 18 year old drinking age.  Karyn said he got home, had a quick shower, got partially dressed, and raced out the door.

He said the formal was "no big deal", and he was going with a group of his mates.

I turned up, camera on hand, to see him arrive.

Here is Matthew with "his mates".

Her name is Melanie.

A win at Moruya

We went to the races at Moruya (on the NSW South Coast) the other day.  We decided to make it an all-day trip because Moruya is about 2 1/2 hours away.

We had Kevin Sweeney riding him, which was good; we have a lot of faith in him.  We don't have to give him riding instructions because we can leave it to him to find his way between or around the opposition, and he knows better than us how the other jockeys are likely to perform on the day.

Diamond Jay was last for most of the race, and then when they reached the straight, she just powered past the opposition.  It always makes the trip home more enjoyable with a trophy in your hand.

The downside of a win is the amount of time Karyn likes to spend celebrating in the bar afterwards.

Everyone else had left until it was just us, the bartender, and the police wondering why there were still people at the track.

Catherine's Year 12 Formal

The daughter of a friend of ours was having her Year 12 formal, and I offered to come over and take some photos.

I really had ulterior motives.  You see when I did a photography course a few years ago, we did a module on portraits.  Now to do take a portrait, you need a subject.  In my house, both Karyn and Matthew refuse to have their photos taken normally, so getting them to sit for a portrait shot was impossible. I ended up having to use one of our dogs for my portrait photo.

Catherine is extremely photogenic, so she agreed to pose for some shots before going to her Formal.  I took lots so that I will have plenty of material to practice my Photoshop skills in the coming year.  I learnt a lot from the process, including how difficult it can be to get a good picture during a social occasion with people all around, the problems of taking photos in the very late afternoon, the difficulty of finding a nice background, and how you can't trust some photo printing places to accurately print the right colours.

Anyway, it was nice of her to give me the opportunity to practice.

The things that parents have to do..

"Coasties" came to an end this week, with Matthew due to leave the coast at 6am on Tuesday for the drive back to Canberra.   Everyone had to be back by Tuesday to return their textbooks and to check their term scores.  It is about a 3 hour drive from Canberra to where they were staying.

Matthew rang in at about 7pm to say that one of the boys had cut his hand and it had turned septic,  The local medical centre said that they had to return immediately to get it operated on in Canberra,  so they were leaving in a short while.

We expected him about 10pm, so I went to a friend's house to see some of their holiday snaps.

At about 9pm I got a phonecall from Matt saying that their car had broken down and they were hoping to get it towed.  About 9:15pm I got another call saying that they wouldn't tow the car anywhere where they could get accommodation or transport, and would I mind coming and getting them?

So at 9:30pm I drove to Ulladulla to get them.  I got there at around 1am.  It was a stressful drive because of the kangaroos jumping across the road in the dark.  You just get no warning - you just see this big 6 foot shape leap across the front of your car.  There is no street lighting on the roads, and about half the trip is on winding mountain roads in the dark where there isn't even moonlight.

So I got there and found them parked at a closed service station looking rather forlorn.  They transferred a mountain of luggage into my car and we took off.  First stop was to find some coffee for me.

So we stopped at Bateman's Bay for coffee and then headed home.

You know if I close my eyes I can still see the long lines of reflectors stretching into the distance.

So we finally got home at around 4am after dropping the other kids off first.

If I remember correctly, today Matt has to:

• go to school to return his text books
• work at the restaurant over lunch
• go to the Uni of Canberra for an information session
• work at the restaurant in the evening.

I'm so glad he got 4 hours sleep.

Things will be getting back to normal soon

This has been a strange month, and I'm glad that it's over.

I've been out of work for the past month. As an IT contractor I win and then work on contracts that generally run for a fixed period, and then when it's about to finish, I bid for the next contract, and so on. However, this time a contract finished and I didn't have the next one lined up already. So for the past 4 weeks I've been madly bidding for new contracts, not kicking back and enjoying myself.

So now that I've won another contract I actually have a few days to enjoy myself before starting work.

Matt is also away on "coasties". This is a Canberra phenomenon where the Year 12 kids go down to the coast to celebrate finishing school, by partying non-stop, I gather.

Matt being away means that the house has remained tidy for a whole week. I bet the utilities bills are much smaller this month because there's no teenager having 3 showers a day and staying up all night on his Playstation and Xbox.

Today we spent a day tidying up the yard. Even Missy wanted to get in the pool.

But next week Matt gets home and I start work. So things will be getting back to normal.

Good customer service

Thank goodness the heat has returned.

Today it was about 32 degrees and very pleasant.  I went swimming a few times - after gardening for a while it was good to jump in and cool down.

I experienced some good customer service today.  At least I'm scoring it that way.  Last year we had the last of our back lawn replaced by artificial grass because with the long drought here in Canberra most of the grass had died off and we're not allowed to water it to keep it alive.  The dams are slowly filling up again, but the government here is pushing its "water conservation" idealism so hard that even if the dams are full again I'm sure they'll have some other excuse for forcing us to save water.  They have increased the price of water already because we weren't using as much so they weren't collecting as much tax.

And this idiot Prime Minister of ours wants to add a new Carbon Tax to everything we buy or use in order to .... well, we're not exactly sure ... but it seems that we should be penalised for generating carbon dioxide and we should encourage all our manufacturers to relocate overseas.  But of course our largest polluters should be exempt.  Presumably the government will also impose a tariff on goods produced by countries without a carbon tax to keep a "level playing field".  But I bet they don't.  Should we plan to shut down a few coal-fired powerstations and replace them we non-polluting nuclear ones?  "Oh no", they say.  "Let's wait for 'clean coal' solutions to be worked out in the next 20 years or so".

Anyway, back to the good customer service story.

After my morning swim, I noticed that the artificial grass had become flattened in the main walkways.  The folks who laid the grass said that sometimes they add some rubber fill to the grass to help the blades remain upright, but that our grass was a new design and probably shouldn't need it.  So at about 9:30am I emailed them and asked if they could drop by sometime and give us some of the rubber to add to the grass.  I went upstairs and had a shower, and by the time I got downstairs, probably around 10am, the grass folks were already there lifting the grass pile and adding the rubber.

That's what I call customer service.

You can contact them at --> www.keepingitgreen.com.au

I think that they've earned a free endorsement.

I blame the French atomic tests

I can't believe that we've been suffering from a heatwave for the past few days and today I'm sitting here in trackpants and ugh boots because it's so cold.

I blame them French and their atomic tests in the Pacific.

At least the temperature makes it more enjoyable to drink red wine. Tonight I'm having a nice Cabernet Merlot.

PS. When I published this, the following ad popped up courtesy of Google. Clever people at Google - they knew I'd be more likely to buy wine rather than an atomic bomb.

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