More photography

I had a chance to do some more photography today.

Firstly, I went back to the Botanic Gardens where I photographed yesterday.  After looking at the photos on the computer last night, I realised that some of the photos showed too much light reflection off the leaves, so today I went back and took some more using a polarizing filter.  Unfortunately, even though the filter was effective, the afternoon sun didn't provide the same "fresh" green as I captured yesterday morning.  Oh well, I learn something each time.

Later on, I drove up to the top of Black Mountain to see what was available for picture-taking.  The Botanic Gardens are at the base of Black Mountain, so this involved driving out of the Gardens, turning right, driving about 100m, then turning onto the road that goes to the top of the mountain.

I didn't want to catch the lift to the observation deck as I expect to do that in a few days time when Fay's friend arrives to visit for a few days.  So I was content to just wander around and snap a few shots.

This was taken from a lookout, overlooking Lake Burley Griffin.  The Captain Cook water jet is to the left of the Commonwealth Avenue bridge.

This is the Telstra Tower at the top of Black Mountain.  The sky looks really blue because I was using a circular polarizing filter.

Here is a close-up of the tower, standing just outside the entrance at its base.

Sammy

My mother-in-law's new puppy has started to settle down and hopefully knows not to chew the carpet anymore.  She's also settled on the name "Sammy" after downloading pages of poodle names off the Internet.

I've always found it difficult to take pictures of black poodles because the pictures always seem to make them look like black blobs with no discernible features.  A flash only make them look worse because of the reflection off their coat.  Here is the best picture that I've taken so far.

I'll try photographing him again over the next few days to see how I can take better photographs.

Today I went to the Botanic Gardens to practice taking photos in dappled light.  I find this the hardest type of lighting, but one that I have to deal with a lot.

We saw Avatar 3D

Tonight Matt and I went to see the new movie "Avatar".

Fabulous.

We saw the 3D version, and after seeing this, I really wouldn't want to see the conventional 2D version of it because the experience would be diminished so much.

Christmas Day

Well, Christmas Day has started off differently from most.

4am:  Matthew was working last night and went out for drinks afterwoods.  He got home around 4am with a drunk mate in tow who needed somewhere to sleep.  So at 4am Matthew is organising a mattress and sleeping bag for him.  I was more concerned about his friend being sick during the night, but everything was ok.  Karyn got them up at 8am because we thought that Joel's parents would be wanting him home for Christmas morning.

9am:  Despite that fact that we are in the middle of a drought and that we've been suffering from 35 degree heat for the past few days, today we wake up to rain and 23 degree temperature.  We had been invited to a friend's house for Christmas dinner that was being held outside with lots of people invited.  Fortunately we had decided to have our lunch here first so we don't have to worry about the rain ruining our plans.

Matthew also left it to 4am to wrap his presents.  As you can see from what he handed me.  And yes, this is before I tried to open it.

Matthew just had enough energy to open his presents.  He then went back to bed.

We got to wear our matching Hawaiian outfits (her suggestion - not mine). Until Karyn spilt some beetroot dip down her dress.

Fay's new puppy that she bought as a Christmas present to herself.  Poor thing.










11:30am:  I've just had to stand in the rain to put the leg of pork in the barbeque.  Fortunately it's got a lid.

12:30pm:  It's harder than normal to get the barbeque to the right temperature.  I think the constant rain falling on the lid is causing it to lose heat.  I've just added a chicken to the barbeque.

1:30pm.  My mother-in-law's dog just chewed a hole in our carpet.

2:00pm.  Lunch.  I can't drink because we have to go to Penny's this afternoon and, as usual, I am the "designated driver".  This year I tried hard to avoid overeating.  I succeeded.  I had some of everything and not too much of anything.  The Christmas pudding was fantastic:  you can never add too much brandy.

4pm.  Off to Penny's.  Fay is having a nanna-nap instead.  Matt is playing World of Warcraft on his new quad-core, twin-screen computer - it would take the end of the world to get him off it.

6pm.  Back from Penny's.  Karyn and Penny were having champagne with raspberry liqueur in it. As the designated driver, I stuck to Pepsi Max.

6:30pm.  Dog has chewed a second hole in carpet.   May have fatal accident in the morning.

7:30pm.  Karyn & Fay were yawning and went to bed.

1:00am.  I went to bed.

3am.  Karyn went downstairs and told Matthew to get off computer and go to bed.

The return of the mother-in-law

Christmas is upon us and so is my mother-in-law.

Unfortunately the office where I work is closed for the coming week.

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.

Ads by Google

Buy Wine Online
Quality Wines, only $79 a case! Unbeatable Value, but be quick.
Cellarmasters.com.au/OnlineOffer

No luck at Adaminaby

Yesterday we went to the races at Adaminaby (about half an hour south of Cooma).

Adaminaby has one of those once-a-year racetracks that you sometimes think are really a pub with a racetrack attached. Adaminaby Cup day is a major fundraising day for the local community, so you expect slightly inflated prices, but Karyn and Penny were very happy with the price of Champagne. Being the designated driver, I just stuck to water all day. But we had a really good time despite not coming away with a win.


We got there early, and despite filling the boot with chairs, folding tables and the like, we decided to sit in the stand, just in front of the bookies. It made it easy to see the prices.


We had a few wins, and even more losses, but of course were slightly in the red by the end of the day.

Diamond Jay was in the last race, unfortunately. "Unfortunately" because the clouds were getting blacker and blacker as the day progressed, with showers increasing. I'm still getting the feel of my new camera, so I wasn't quite sure how far to go with adjusting the settings for the decreasing amount of light. I kept the speed at 1/1600 sec and increased the ISO 800, and hope that there would be enough light for a decent photo. There was, but only just. You might think that the colours are screwed up, but because of the drought, the grass was actually bleached white. Because of the light drizzle, this then turned an orangey colour that you can see below.

Here's Diamond Jay crossing the line in about 6th place. Just after the start, I heard the racecaller saying how DJ was doing it hard riding 3 horses wide, and I remembered that we had an apprentice on board to get a 3kg weight reduction. The downside of a lot of apprentices is that some of them have a lot to learn, and this guy seemed to run 3 wide for the whole race, which meant that we ran about 2,000m instead of 1,750m. The jockey came back and said that the horse was just too slow, but then how many jockeys would blame themselves. So given the circumstances, maybe 6th wasn't too bad. We'll just make sure we don't get that apprentice again.

Here was one of the "colourful" racegoers.



The funny thing is that you can have a really great day at country races. There's no need to get dressed up (if you're a guy). I like to wear my bright Hawaiian shirts. And everyone is just there to have a good time. What more could you ask for than a nice warm day, a few winners, and a steak sandwich in one hand? Apart from a beer in the other hand, of course.

You just have to be prepared to buy lots of raffle tickets for one fundraiser or another. The organisers are smart enough to have their cute children walking around all day asking you to buy them. I'm often glad not to win the prizes though - I kept thinking "what if I won that huge quilt?"

It's hot outside

It's days like today that I'm glad we installed air conditioning. It's 38 degrees C (that's 100 farenheit) outside and 25 degrees inside.

There appears to be a heatwave right across Australia at the moment and we seem to be getting the worst of it. Fortunately Canberra is a dry place so that evaporative cooling works a treat. And only a few cents a day to run.

I've been in the pool twice already, because every time I go outside I get hot and then I see that lovely, icy cold, blue swimming pool shimmering in the sun. I reckon I should just pretend I'm in Hawaii and wear my swimming gear all day and fall in the water occasionally. If I ask nicely I'm sure Karyn will bring me out a glass of cold champagne.



It just occurred to me that I should drop the temperature of the spa. Who wants to get into a 40 degree spa in Summer? It's been a week or so since I used it, and this hot snap has just hit us - I expect it to continue like this for the next 5 months or so.

I keep forgetting that it's still only Spring.

The dogs seem to be enjoying the heat. Here is Coco lying in the hot sun.

I'm getting tired of not working now. I seem to spend a large slice of every day applying for new contracts. It's actually easier just going to work each day. I've re-written my CV several times now with different perspectives for different types of job. I had an interview yesterday that seemed to go OK, but you never know what the opposition is like.

The contract job market is about to start slowing down for Christmas soon. I hope I've found something by then or I may have to get a job doing babysitting or ironing. Unfortunately Karyn keeps finding me things to do around the house.

Oh well, back to the next job application.

Oh no! The thermometer has just gone up to 26 degrees.

Maybe just one more swim first ...

Finally - my photos from Hawaii

I finally got my photos from Hawaii organised and loaded into Flickr.

You can see them here --> http://www.flickr.com/photos/apeyton/collections/72157622744234342/

Enjoy.

Another Win

On Melbourne Cup Day we drove down to Bega. Our horse was running there, and it's always a good excuse for an outing.

The only downside is the 3 hour drive to get there.

The upside is:



and

Surprise Visitor

This was not the sort of visitor that I expected to be lurking at the front of my house this afternoon.

Hawaii - First few days

After a year of anticipation, we finally got to Hawaii. It was just as good as we remembered from 25 years ago.

We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, which we still reckon is the best place to stay in Honolulu. Here is the view from our room.



I wish I was there now. Outside it's only 10 degrees and raining.

The Hilton is about a 15 minute walk to downtown Waikiki and an equal distance the other way to the Ala Moana shopping centre. So you get the benefit of being away from the main drag in a more peaceful area without also being too far away from the excitement.

Waikiki is a very busy place, with a lot of hotels crowding one another for a piece of beachfront. The beach was surprisingly small, with only about 30' from the buildings to the water. In fact, while I was standing there taking a photo one day, a big wave came in and swamped some people sunbaking on what they thought was safe territory.

You can see from the picture above where the sand is wet - to the left of the girl. She was lying on a towel and got hit by a wave. I read in the paper that locals are concerned about the loss of sand.

We didn't do anything in particular for the first few days, just enjoyed being away from work, and explored the Waikiki area and got our bearings. And drank lots of cocktails. I'm not a big drinker, but it just seems to be the thing to do there.

Hawaii trip approaches

Only 5 sleeps to go before our trip to Hawaii.

I’ve just got a new camera for the occasion, a Canon 450D with a set of 18-55 and 55-250 image-stabilised lenses. This camera is quite different from by previous 38-380 Kodak digital camera as there’s a lot more to worry about in the settings department.

And now I have to decide which lens to keep on as default – the short or the long range one. Murphy’s Law says that whenever I have the short-range one on, I’ll need the telephoto one on. Mark reckons that when travelling in Thailand recently, he just kept the short-range one on.

I went to the botanic gardens this weekend to try out some high-contrast photography. A few months ago I went to a rainforest (with my previous camera) and I was disappointed at the quality of the photos that I took – in the rainforest it is dark green with the occasional splash of intense sunlight – sometimes reflecting brightly off leaves. The Kodak camera didn’t handle low light-level situations well. Most of my photos ended up being either too dark, or overexposed where there were patches of sunlight. So yesterday I took myself off to the rainforest area of the botanic gardens to try again.

I guess that it was a learning experience, without much to show for it. While the camera handled the environment better, I still wasn’t able to capture that dark rainforest look with a million shades of green all around. For Father’s Day today Matt gave me a polarising filter that I think might help with the reflected light off the leaves. Surprisingly, the best ones were taken when I used the flash. And the ones where I got the camera settings right were the ones with the worst compositions. Anyway, as I said, a learning experience. After we get back from Hawaii, I’ll try again with my new polarising filter.

I hope to be able to take a lot of shots in Hawaii. I’m taking a large USB drive to copy them on to. Karyn’s taking her netbook for me to use to upload and store the photos. I don’t know what the hotel charges for internet access – certainly up in Sydney it was too expensive for casual browsing. It’s probably costed for business people who can just add it to their accommodation bill.

Today was Father’s Day, so Karyn and I went to the Bella Vista restaurant on the lake at Belconnen where Matt works. He was working there today because of Father’s Day. As usual the food was terrific. Karyn had lasagne, and I had a prawn and calamari entree and a pasta dish with strips of veal, mushrooms, chilli, olives, and other yummy ingredients. We washed it down with a lovely bottle of sparkling shiraz. Karyn finished off her meal with a dessert made from champagne blended with lemon liqueur, cream, and lemon sorbet. With 3kg left to lose on my diet, I gave dessert a miss.

A welcome addition to the kitchen

We finally gave in and bought a new coffee maker this week.

It's bad enough having a teenager who complains all the time, but it's even worse if he has a job making expresso coffees and then has to come home and drink instant coffee.

Normally I drink plunger coffee, but apparently that is too hard for him.

So we bought a small expresso maker to replace our aging one. It was on special at Aldi's and was a very good buy for the price. It has quite a few interesting features and one strange one. I don't understand the water hardness adjustment - but then our water is pretty pure in Canberra and maybe this is a problem elsewhere.

One ongoing problem that I can forsee is having to make Karyn a cappuccino each morning before I go to work so that she can enjoy it before getting out of bed.

I'm sure that this gadget will get a lot more use than some that are in the cupboards.

New ISP

It feels great to be free from Telstra broadband. We've now switched to TPG.

Despite Telstra Bigpond being the dominant provider in Australia, they seem to offer the worst deals. You can't fault their system reliability, but you certainly pay for it. I was paying around $100/month for 25GB - now with TPG I pay $60/month for 75GB.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when Telstra decided to get rid of personal web pages. Or rather, you could start paying an additional $10/month for the priviledge. All the other providers still allow you a small site for free. I have a site that shows my family genealogy, and I want to keep it to share it with others and to allow other family members to find me. It has worked well for me for many years.

So finally Telstra forced me to look for an alternative supplier. It seems that they are more interested in getting new customers rather than keeping their existing ones. I was genuinely surprised when I called to cancel my service and the operator made no attempt to get me to change my mind. Maybe I was just one of thousands.

But let me tell you, it's hard being without the Internet for a week. It's like having no electricity or no TV. Fortunately Matt's iPhone can be used as a modem, so Karyn could plug it into her laptop to check her email. Lucky Matt has a 1GB download allowance for his phone.

Karyn rang me at work on Monday with joy in her voice as she said that all 3 lights were green on the modem, meaning that we were back online.

Mum's Birthday in Sydney

Last weekend we went to Sydney so see Mum for her birthday.

We now have a love/hate relationship with Sydney - we remember the great time that we had when we lived there, and it's a good place to visit, BUT we're glad we don't live there anymore.

When you visit Sydney, you are struck by the scene of a modern city flanking a beautiful harbour. The main focus of the city is Circular Quay, busy with ferries shuttling people from the rim of the harbour to the centre. Circular Quay is flanked by the Harbour Bridge on the left and the Opera House on the right. It's hard to think of politicians today making the same decisions as those of the past that resulted in such striking landmarks.

But then there's the traffic, and the people. And worst of all are the strange traffic diversions that take you in directions that you don't think that you want to go, which then force you to turn into tunnels that do take you where you want to go. And you have to be so careful to be in just the right lane so that you can take the right exit to move to another lane to take another exit to end up in the right street. Make one wrong turn and you could end up anywhere. And forget your GPS - you have to keep your eyes on the street signs.

We stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel at Circular Quay. I would recommend it to anyone. Good rooms, great views, excellent gym, but wi-fi far too expensive for the casual visitor.

On Saturday night we went to Doyles at Circular Quay for dinner with Mum, Richard and Lynne. (I forgot to take a picture of us all). The food was good and the view even better (see photo below). The only problem was that I reckon that they turned off the heading at 9PM to make everyone leave.


On Sunday morning we went for a walk to the street markets at the Rocks (a stone's throw from the Quay) were Karyn bought a new vase/water bowl/decoration-filled-with-water-that-you-float-things-in.


All in all, a very nice weekend.

The case of the misplaced water heater

I had a phone call from Matthew the other day. I was at work and he was home on school holidays.

Speaking over a loud hissing noise, he explained that there was no hot water and that the water heater was making a loud noise. It turned out that the water heater had sprung a leak and extinguished the gas pilot light. We needed a new one.

A man from the gas company came out and recommended a new instantaneous gas water heater rather than the storage system that we had previously. 5 stars instead of 2 apparently. The down side was that it couldn't go in the shed at the side of the house (according to the installation instructions), and the guy recommended putting it on the back wall next to the kitchen window. Surprisingly, the unit was only about the size of a large briefcase. They suggested the back of the house because people steal them. At $2,000 each, I'm not surprised.

I came home the next day to find the unit installed.

A problem then manifested itself. I found myself choking on the gas fumes. You see, when it is heating water, it fires its exhaust out horizontally almost 10 feet (3m). If you stand or sit on the decking at the back of the house, all you can smell are the gas fumes. A point that the salesman failed to mention.

I could just imagine sitting on the decking in summer, enjoying the outdoors - maybe a nice barbequeued steak, a glass of cabernet merlot, and a lung full of gas.

Being a bit of a soft touch myself, I got Karyn to give the gas company a call the next day. The salesman then rang me to say that they'll come and move it to the side of the house, but that we should leave it at the back because:

• it isn't a gas smell, just a "new" smell
• the gas exhaust isn't toxic because it's Natural Gas
• people steal the units

I said "what about the security bracket that it mentions in the one of the pamphlets that came with the unit"?

"Oh, but that bracket's ugly"

"But if the unit is on the side of the house we won't see it"

"Oh".

So they came and moved it.

Here is where they repositioned the unit at the side of the house, complete with an ugly security bracket.

What, you can't see the ugly security bracket?

Here it is - underneath the unit at the back (with a padlock on).

Windows can be so frustrating at times...

I'm sitting here at the moment with a friend's laptop on my desk. I feel like throwing it on the floor and jumping on it.

Like most girls' laptops that I get to fix the virus protector is about 2 years out of date. I think that it came with a 3 month free licence for Norton Antivirus, and when that ran out it nobody ever bothered with it again. Now what I have found is that an expired version of Norton is worse than a virus itself. Norton seems to try unsuccessfully to connect back to headquarters, and it hates you trying to use your laptop until it is good and ready to allow you. The first thing I always have to do is deinstall Norton completely. I often have to download the additional Norton deinstaller/cleanup tool to make sure that everything is properly removed - apparently the standard de-install leaves bad stuff hanging around.

Now Internet Explorer causes the machine to hang. I've had to load Firefox just to access the Internet.

But every now and then the machine just ... hangs..... for about 5 frustrating minutes. And then ... bingo... its back.

While its hung, it's really hung. I can't even get the Task Manager to run, so I've no idea what could be causing the hang.

I've tried downloading a bunch of Windows updates, but after downloading they refuse to install. I can see I've got a bit of work in front of me. Maybe a couple of days' worth.

Batching for a week

Karyn's been away this week, taking her mother home. So Matt and I have had the place to ourselves. Not that we've got up to much, you understand.

On Sunday night we went to see the new Star Trek movie. We both thought it was great. We were going to have dinner at the sleazy bar next to where Matt works, but he had filled up with one of those disgustingly large buckets of popcorn, and so didn't feel like eating.

The pool company came and installed the new spa cover one day, but when we decided to celebrate with a spa that night, we found that they turned off the spa heater, so it was too cold. So I turned it back on and cranked the thermostat up.

The next night we got in, and it was too hot. We now know what a cooking lobster feels like. I now know that 41 degrees is about 3 degrees too much. We could only stand it for about 15 minutes.

Unfortunately the spa cover doesn't fit properly, so they'll have to make another one. Karyn says they took quite a while measuring it up, so someone has slipped up big. On the side nearest the house it looks quite neat, but from the side and back you can see how it doesn't cover properly. Fortunately we haven't paid for it yet.

It looks good from the front...

But really untidy from the side.

When I rang the guy who installed it, he said he "thought there might be a small problem", but "he wasn't sure".

Dinner each night was whatever we felt like. Reheated frozen dinners featured a lot. We went out to Wests Rugby Club one night and had a pretty good nosh up. Matt had a Caesar Salad with freshly cooked king prawns, and I had the roast pork buffet. It's interesting that now Matt's 18 and can drink anything he likes from beer to spirits, he'd still rather just have a Coke. He doesn't seem to have inherited his mother's genes.

He went out with some mates after work on Friday night. I bet my parents were glad we didn't have mobile phone technology in my youth, because they never had to respond to SMSs at 2:00AM asking if we could sleep over somewhere.

Karyn came home on Saturday with a 6 hour drive. I noticed that when she got home she ignored the large stack of laundry that needed ironing. But I was generous and let her have the evening off. She can start on it tomorrow.

Today we finished the week off with a lunch with our friends Peter, Dot, and May at the Goulburn Workers' Club, about an hour's drive north of Canberra. This is a monthly event/therapy session where we get to compare horror stories about bringing up teenagers.

Peter and Andy

May, Karyn, and Dot

The mother-in-law has left the building

Karyn has taken her mum back to Port Stephens, leaving Matt and I to look after ourselves. She'll only be away for a week, so there shouldn't be too much mess and dirty washing for her when she gets back.

It's been a horrible weekend. Matt used up all our download allowance (I thought 25GB would be enough!) so we were slowed to 64k/sec, down from about 8MB/sec. It's hard to believe that once upon a time 64K would have been fast. It surprised me just how much I expect the Internet to be there whenever I want. Karyn's also taken her netbook with her, so we've lost our family-room internet device. Matt, at least, always has his iPhone in one hand, so he's never out of touch.

The situation has prompted me to change ISPs. Bigpond is dropping its member webpages, so I'll have nowhere to store my genealogy web pages. I'll probably shift to TPG as they have the best deal; I can get a greater download for less price. And they still have member homepages.

Matt and I had a spa tonight. It was about 6 degrees outside, so a bit warmer than its been in the past week, but still a big shock when you get out of the warm water. When we were in there I had a horrible thought: what if Matt closed the door and it locked automatically? Fortunately he hadn't or we'd be blocks of ice by now.

Bad news

Bad news.

My mother-in-law's leg is too sore and she will have to stay longer.

I'll leave it to you to work out the bad news part.

A poor way to end a day

Today wasn't as good as we hoped it would be. We took a trip to Bega.

Why go to a little hamlet on the far South Coast of NSW? Because of its racecourse. Our horse was running there, so we felt obliged to make the 3 hour trip. That's 3 hours each way. In a car for 6 hours. Locked in car with my mother-in-law. But of course I'm only joking, she's not too bad.

We had to leave at around 8am so that we could get there early enough to get a table in the Members area. So I had to get up at around 6:30 so I could spend half an hour on the treadmill first.

We picked up Penny, and after about 2 hours we stopped for coffee at Maccas in Cooma, where it was foggy and the temperature was a pleasant 6 degrees. By the time we got down to sea-level, the temperature had climbed to a mild 14 degrees and the sun was out.

Karyn went to say hello to Diamond Jay, and got bitten again. It happens every time. I guess one day she'll learn to stay away from the part with teeth.

It was a great race meeting at the Sapphire Coast track. Unfortuntely we came 6th. The jockey blamed the horse for not performing, but we prefer to blame him. So no trophy this time.

To make the day worse, Karyn put on a trifecta bet (picking first, second, and third) but the girl at the TAB put it on wrong. When Karyn realised this, she broke the cardinal rule of betting, and had the bet changed. If she'd left it alone, we'd have walked away with a 490:1 payout. But she broke the rule of never changing a mistaken bet, so we walked away with nothing.

So, back in the car for another 3 hour drive. With the mother-in-law next to me all the way. I had to drive, because the girls had consumed at least a bottle each.

By the time we reached Cooma we felt like a nice steak dinner, so we stopped off at the local RSL, and as luck would have it, the restaurant didn't open for another half an hour. We didn't feel like waiting, so back to McDonalds we went.

The girls pigged out on fat-burgers, while I had a wrap from their healthy-choice menu. Strange, but this menu has shrinked to almost nothing these days.

On the way back to the car, Fay tripped over and hurt herself. I'm sure the bottle of wine had nothing to do with it. She already had an injured ankle, so now she has an injured wrist and hip go with it. When we got home she realised the disadvange of our split-level home: stairs. It took ages for her to get upstairs and into bed.

Boy am I not looking forward to the morning when she tries to get up and finds out that her muscles have locked-up. Maybe I can go out somewhere before she wakes up.

I got into the spa for a relaxing float-around. And, of course, it started to rain. You know, I find it hard to relax in the spa when it's raining on my head.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Art Show time

It's strange that when I'm doing lots I don't seem to blog much. Now it's been so long that I can hardly remember all the things that I've done over the past few weeks.

It's certainly been a busy day today, and I've just been relaxing in the spa for an hour or so. Everybody has gone to bed and Matthew's out sampling some of the bars around town now that he's 18 and it's all legal. He left his car at home, so that's one thing I don't have to worry about. Donna, who lives a few doors up the street, was in an accident during the week and wrote off her car. She came to dinner tonight on crutches; fortunately a banged-up ankle is her only injury.

Karyn's friend Jessica came down for the weekend (she couldn't make it for Matthew's birthday). She and I went to the Radford College Art Show today, and we really enjoyed the paintings. I'm on the organising committee, helping out with the IT-related tasks like the art catalog and sales recording system. There were so many great paintings that next year I need to agree a budget with Karyn and buy something on the spot if I like it. This year I dithered so much on opening night that all the good ones got bought within a few minutes.

Some fabulous student art. It's amazing what some people can do with an HB pencil.

I'm glad I got out of the job of setting up the display stands. I did it last year and it took us until midnight.

We had great art that sold well. When one artist found that all his paintings sold on the first day, he turned up with 3 more in his car for us to sell.

Once the show started we could relax a bit. No disasters (yet).

I've worked out a better method for printing off the artist sales statements, so I'll have to be there at the end for a few hours to upgrade the system and install the new reports before all the artists turn up for their money.