ANZAC Day - Dawn Service

This year I again went to the Anzac Day dawn service.

It was easier than I thought to get up at 4:20am.  I went with Di and Donna (our neighbours) leaving Karyn and Matt in still in bed.  No way can you get Karyn up early.

As we approached the War Memorial we took seemingly random turns looking for parking, only to end up exactly where we parked last year.  We walked up to the cenotaph with a thousand other people only to find many thousands already there.  I'm not certain of my ability to estimate crowds of people, but I reckon there must have been over 6,000 people there.

When the official party arrived, they made no fuss about the presence of the Prime Minister, which was good. It's not a time for politicians.  After all, aren't they the ones who get us into wars in the first place?

It was a very simple ceremony, but we reflected afterwoods that there we didn't like the hymns they selected this year.  Maybe hymns are less relevant these days.

The ceremony lasted about 30 minutes and then ended.  We walked up to the volunteer tea/coffee stalls, but they'd run out of coffee and only had soy milk left.  So we had to wander around until we found one with coffee and real milk.

We then had an early breakfast at Pizazz at Kingston before coming home.

Away for Easter - but not on holiday

Today we drove up to Port Stephens to stay at the mother-in-law's.

The traffic was pretty good until we reached Sydney and got onto Pennant Hills Road where it became bumper-to-bumper. We picked-up Jessica at Hornsby and headed up to Newcastle.  The expressway was busy, but flowed well.  As usual there were the usual hoons who felt the need to tailgate and zoom in and out of lanes.

When we arrived it appeared that there's a big list of things for me to do.  It seems like my days up here are fully planned out for me.

Here's where we had lunch on Sunday.

Credit Card fraud

I got hit by credit card fraud this week .

The Credit Union rang me to ask about a few transactions that had just been made on my credit card.  I said that I knew nothing about them, and they said that they were probably fraudulent.  It looks like they have a system for identifying suspicious transactions.  They immediately cancelled the card and issued me with a new one, but over the next few days about $2000 in transactions had been racked up from all over the world.

I don't know how they got my card number, perhaps they have a software program for working them out, or maybe there are people in shops or restaurants who copy the card details and sell them.  I just hope they can track the bastards down.  I never use this particular card over the internet, in case you were wondering.

Now I have the hassle of filling in paperwork to get the transactions reversed.

Back on the treadmill

This weekend I was able to get back on my treadmill and go for a walk.  

Although my broken toe is sore if I kick something or wear tight shoes, it doesn't hurt to walk any more.  Today was a bit of an experiment because I feel guilty for not exercising each day; but afterwoods there was no residual pain at all.  But then there are always pain-killers and anti-inflammatories !

It's been a miserable weekend so far, with drizzle most of the day, so walking inside is the only option available.  Karyn's been painting doors, architraves and skirting boards.  I've been doing .... not much.  Supervising, really.

Penny's Birthday

On Sunday we celebrated Penny's birthday at our place.  She's got a few things in the pipeline at the moment so we thought that we'd hold her party here and give her a bit of a rest.

We had a BBQ and had a great time.  What could be better than good friends, good wine, and good cake?

Here's Penny and her daughter Catherine.

Once the thunderstorm passed, the day improved remarkably.  Here we are outside after lunch.

From the left:  Gabby (hiding from the camera), Catherine, Karyn, Penny, Peter, and Jill.

Half a day's racing at Braidwood

Today we went to the picnic races at Braidwood.   This is a once-a-year event run as a major fundraising activity for the local town's community services.  We love going to these races because they are a great day out.
There's nothing flash about the racecourse, but it was pretty good for somewhere that has races once a year.  And the atmosphere is terrific, with everyone out to enjoy themselves.

The course has a very "personal" feel about it compared to other courses.  There was little separation between the people and the horses.  In fact the horses were unloaded in the carpark, in between parked cars.   You got to stand within spitting distance of the finish line; so much so that I had to change to my 18-55mm camera lens because I was so close.

Our horse, Diamond Jay was racing in the last race.

In the fourth race, one of the jockeys lost his saddle near the finishing line.  Here is a quick shot I was able to get off as he went by.  You can see the jockey trying to stay on-board whilst his saddle was down past his left leg.

We were sitting next to another jockey's wife, and she was really upset that this happened, because it meant that someone (either the trainer or the strapper) hadn't done their job and the jockey could have been badly hurt.

The fourth race was actually declared a non-race because the starting gates had a problem.  After about an hour of discussion between the jockeys and the raceclub it was decided to abandon the rest of the races on safety grounds.  I wondered why they didn't revert to a standing-start so the races could continue.

So races 4 to 8 were cancelled and we got to go home without a trophy or prizemoney.

It was probably going to be Diamond Jay's last race for the season before a rest, so she might not run again now for several months.  We'll just have to wait and see.

"Just ignore the pain ..."

I saw the doctor today.  He says that my toe is broken but there's nothing that can be done with it except wait for it to heal by itself.

He said that I should just ignore the pain.

Easy for him to say.