dale's thoughts

Home and Family

Last Thursday morning Callum and I picked up Cassandra and Annabelle from hospital. Annie settled in well during the first day, sleeping for most of it and seeming comfortable and happy. Then night time hit! She was active and up most of the night, seemingly wanting to play. This has lasted for a few days, the first was the worst but it is slowly getting better. Best guess is that she is trying to break out of her old 'in womb' cycle: sleep during the day when mummy is moving about, play during the night when mummy is still.

It's nice having a baby in the house again. I've called Annie 'my boy' or 'Callum' several times now - she is so similar to the way Callum was as a baby but she also has her own traits. The hair is the obvious similarity - both Annie and Callum had long black hair when they were born, with the slightest tinge of red. Their faces are similar but not identical so it will be interesting to see Annie develop.

Callum is very protective of 'my Annabelle' or 'my baby' and I know already he will always take care of her. The other night I took her away to settle her when she was crying. Not long after Callum sat up in bed and yelled out 'what is daddy doing to Annabelle?'. Cassandra comforted to him and had to explain that she was upset and needed comforting. Callum is helping out at nappy change time, bath time and the occasional bottle feed. He's quite happy to hold her even when she is crying. He is very proud of being 'big brother'.

The weekend didn't really feel like the weekend since I'm on holidays and paternity leave. Saturday night we went for a Christmas gathering at Garth and Rebecca's place with Grant, Jenna and Alastair. Rebecca put on a mighty fine Christmas dinner. It was great to catch up with friends who've become somewhat neglected as time goes by and since we've had the pregnancy to work around.

Today we went to see Cassandra's grandmother Doreen, who had a minor heart attack last week and is still under observation at Bowral hospital. She was looking well (Cassandra tells me that seeing Annabelle picked her right up) so hopefully she will be able to go home soon. I hope I look that good at her age, but I doubt I'll get there (85?). I've always had a feeling I wouldn't make it past 75, if I was lucky enough to get that far. We'll see. Grandma is a lovely person and I've seen more of her than my biological grandparents (because my grandparents on my mothers side have passed away as has my grandfather on my fathers side). Bill (who has caught a virus and isn't doing too well at the moment) and Doreen are very welcoming and lovely people and have accepted me from day one. I'm not sure when I started calling them 'grandpa' and 'grandma' (probably because it was very early on) but they as real a set of grandparents to me as anyone could ever be. I hope they get better soon.

Christmas is in about 8 minutes as I type this: bah humbug!. I used to love Christmas as a child and I still like the idea of getting together as a family, but in my 'old age' have become quite cynical about the commercial slant of Christmas.

Best things about Christmas:

1. The look on a child's face as they unwrap a present.
2. Family and friends get togethers.
3. Christmas pudding!

Worst things about Christmas:

1. The perceived need to buy your child a large present (to make up for the fact you neglect them for the rest of the year).
2. Double demerit points (why can't this be year round to get bad drivers off our roads?)
3. The perceived need to spend money on presents and not to be seen as a 'stingy miser'.
4. Realising that Christmas time is the only time you make an effort to see some of the people you love.

There, the 'nays' have it - Christmas is bad, let's cancel it ;)

That being said, we've decided to give Callum a small book and some Smarties from 'Santa' leaving two of the slightly larger items (I think we spent around $25) as having come from his parents. Everyone else pumped him up so much about Santa and Christmas that I can't bear to break his heart. He'll be getting a bigger bicycle as a present sometime in January when everything comes back to normal price and it will come from his parents, not some marketing mascot.

Today we'll be visiting gramps at some stage and having lunch with Cass' father Colin and Cheryle. It will be fun playing with Callum and his present in the backyard if it isn't raining. If it is we'll be playing 'Dora' cards and the game he likes to call 'whoever gets caught by the joker'.

Annabelle Julie King

Good thing I didn't stay up any later last Friday night, because 7pm Saturday Annie 'popped out' as Callum would say.

The short and simple 'man' version of events:

• ~ half past midnight: bedtime :D
• 2am Cassandra started having contractions but didn't tell me (again)
• 4am-ish I was up minding Callum as he had food poisoning or a virus and was losing liquid 'at both ends'. Cassandra asks if she should call her mum because her contractions were strong and regular.
• 5am-ish Cass' mum arrives to stay and look after Callum - we drive into hospital - contractions 5mins apart
• 6am-ish I realise I should have gone to bed earlier - Cassandra is felling sick and wants to come home
• 8am-ish The contractions die right down and they consider sending us home.
• 10am-ish we leave the hospital to come home.
• ...seconds later: contractions start again - we continue home, contractions 5mins apart - Cassandra trying to rest.
• 3pm-ish we head back in because the contractions are strong and painful - we head back in.
• 3.30pm-ish Action time! Marilein our midwife says the baby is coming today.
• ... it all goes hazy around here ... lots of screaming and requests for the gas to go higher than the maximum setting.
• 7pm Annie pops out!

++ I reserve the right to edit this after Cassandra reads it, if I can still type.

She came out rather blue which surprised me - those around didn't seem too concerned and suctioned her airways and I could see she was breathing. She then started turning baby pink - it took a few hours before she looked a normal colour. I don't recall that with Callum as he was whisked away quickly after birth to get cleaned and wrapped. I don't think he was that blue - I wonder if Annie's colour was normal or if she was in trouble? In any case it doesn't matter now, the paedeotrician has checked and counted her and she's fine.

Our midwife was really nice and nearly had to deliver Annie without our obstetrician (he was only seconds away from missing the delivery). She was calming and very in control of the situation. It's nice to have someone competent and experienced - ahh the benefits of private health insurance in Australia!

Here are her vitals:

• Name: Annabelle Julie King (Julie is Cass' mother's name).
• Birthday: 2007-12-15 19:00 on the dot
• Birth weight: 3.95kg - die imperial system die!
• Length: 51cm
• HC: 36cm - watching the head come out is cool - it's not spherical, more like half a discus to start with, turning into an oval.
• Birthplace: Figtree Private Hospital, N.S.W., Australia

Photo:

During the week I've been acting as taxi service between home and the hospital - about a 25 minute drive. Looking after Callum and being on holidays has been great. He's very sensitive at the moment due to emotion overload of us having a second child. We've done the best we can to spoil him and make sure he understands that he's still loved and an important part of the family. He washed Annie's hair when we gave her a bath, which was nice, and he is happy to hold her even when she is crying. He is proud to be a big brother and says he likes Annie. Even still, the smallest things upset him and set him off into a sulk. It's obvious it will take him time to adjust and that we need to be extra sensitive to his feelings.

Today Callum and I met Isaac at Tiger putt-putt (Isaac also became a 'big brother' last week). We played a round of golf then the kids played in the play area while Mark and I sat for a hot drink. It seems like Isaac is reacting similarly to Callum lately so it's good they got to spend some time together. After putt-putt Isaac had to go home and since I had promised Callum we would go ten-pin bowling today off we went. He had fun even though one game is pretty short - I ended up letting him finish half my game as I could tell it was going to finish too early for him. Towards the end I noticed big welts on his arms, mostly where he was holding the bowling ball but all over the rest of his arms as well. I think that could have been from his citrus intolerance, since I'd stupidly let him finish a bottle of non-watered down apple juice at putt-putt (we always water it down for him). It had added vitamin C which I think is part of the cause. The other thing it might have been is the oil from the lanes at bowling. I'll have to take him back there and let him bowl again for a game to rule that out. In any case the welts were gone by an hour later and after some water to drink.

When leaving the hospital tonight, he wanted me to carry him (we'd parked a fair way away). I took a load of stuff to the car then came back to get him. I gave him a piggy back ride back to the car because he looked tired. We drove home and he was fairly quiet in the car. When we got home, he wanted me to carry him up the stairs. As I did I cuddled him and since it had just clicked what was going on I said to him rhetorically: 'You're still Daddy's little baby aren't you?' to which he both sulkily nodded and grinned.

On TV tonight, since I'd let him stay up for a bit of 'Daddy TV' I foolishly left it on 'Air Crash Investigations' for a few minutes since he seemed to be enjoying it. The narrator then pointed out that 'The fire left 147 men dead' which caused no end of questions from him, which I tried to explain as best as I could. About 10 minutes after tucking him in to bed, he called out for me and when I went in he said: 'Daddy, I don't want the fire to make me dead'. I tried to comfort him as best I could and he seemed happy that I wouldn't let that happen to him (with the caveat in my head: 'not if I can help it'). He might still be my little baby but he is growing up fast.

Nearly there...

OK, so no baby yet, but very nearly there. The obstetrician says Cassandra will be induced on Monday if labour doesn't occur naturally this weekend.

So, what have I been doing since last time I updated this thing? Well, between work as usual and life as usual not a lot. Last weekend was pretty quiet - I got stuck into the pruning and got a little hedge trimmer happy. Plenty of hacking and slashing in the front yard until the bushes looked like they had been hit by a cyclone. It wasn't pretty but will hopefully go some way to keeping the spiders away from the house. Oh, I did the lawn too, and put out way more green waste for collection than we are allowed, but luckily they still took it away and only left a warning note. The remainder of it is about a trailer load and I've arranged for Dad to come and help me take that away this weekend.

Sunday afternoon we went swimming at Kiama Leisure Centre which has a really good indoor kiddies pool. Callum swam and had fun and Cassandra got some brief belly relief.

The past week at work was pretty hectic, trying to tidy up things to leave them in a reasonable state for the others that need to cover for me. From Wednesday I started leave and have been doing odd jobs in between the relaxing. On Wednesday we even got to go out to lunch by ourselves to Angelina's Pizza Restaurant in Shellharbour since Callum had an extra day of day-care we needed to use by the end of the year. It was nice to be able to sit and talk with no worry about anyone else, no-one needing to go anywhere or anything needing to get done. Eating there reminded me of how nice a location we live at - close by to the beach and plenty of nice restaurants, whilst not being in the big city and having to worry about huge house prices and traffic.

One job of which I'm very proud was to fix the 'poverty' fridge by putting two bits of poly-pipe where the old rack was. No more shall my family live in poverty - no more shall our milk fall out of the door! I was motivated to fix it because after calling it the "poverty" fridge for so long, then seeing the plight of the people in Darfur on a documentary on TV, I really appreciated just how well off we are. I know where my family is, I know they are alive and well, I can see them - I don't need to worry about my government burning down my house and trying to kill me and my family. I don't pass dead bodies when I go for a walk and I have all the food and drink I could possibly want. To call it the "poverty" fridge is plain ignorant/bigoted and takes away from the people who are really suffering. I know I can't change what is happening there, but I can change my attitude about my own situation. So I had to fix it.

Oh, the other thing that documentary made me realise is that even though the U.S. sometimes does evil things, they do sometimes also do some very good and noble things, and do a lot of humanitarian and peacekeeping work that makes the world a better place.

On a completely different note, I finally worked out what was wrong with Callum's spider man car, apart from a 6V charger for a 6V SLA battery (which should change at >7V) actually outputting 12V. There was also a completely broken connection from the charging 'circuit' (diode + resistor rather than something useful) to the battery. After re-soldering that and buying a new power pack, I got it to charge - well, I also had to constantly wiggle the power connector as there seems to be a dry joint there. I can't believe these toys pass Australian standards as the several things I have found wrong with it are all severe hazards and fire risks - in a child's toy! Now to put it back together and let him drive it again before he gets too big for it!

Anyways, better head of to bed in case today's the day our daughter decides to finally grace us with her presence. I can only hope...

Still Waiting

Still no baby, we've been waiting for what seems like forever. Can't wait for her to arrive so that we can get out of this holding pattern and get stuck into the future.

Of late I've been staying up too late either wasting time on the computer or playing games. I just haven't felt like sleeping at night (though come 8am I do feel like sleeping for the rest of the day. I think it's just to do with the climate and the unknown, and the need for the brain to do mindless tasks.

I don't really remember what happened two weekends ago - I think it was just cleaning and sorting. I took Callum to training that Saturday morning and he had a good time again. Oh, we did go to Unkey Grant and Auntie Jenna's place for dinner that Friday night and had roastage... mmmm roast. I took back some old fashioned chandeliers that they had taken down because I like them and felt the need to hoard. I'm definitely a gatherer not a hunter. I think I did a bit of gardening too and took it pretty easy.

Midweek that week was the usual - too much BF2 and some Country Scrapbooking web work. That was pretty much the same this midweek too.

Last weekend was the usual Callum swimming lesson in the morning, then in the afternoon a bit of cleaning and shopping. Sunday was Roley the Grier's party at Hungry Jacks Shellharbour. I can't believe parents who look seemingly responsible allow their children to drink coke and other soft drink - we're talking about 3-4 year olds here who take whatever is given to them as the right thing to eat and drink. I'm so glad Callum is happy with fruit juices, milk and water because I know he will lead a much healthier life than I have without all that rubbish food. He didn't even like the french fries which is great news for the longevity of his heart. There is high blood pressure and cholesterol problems in my side of the family and I so don't want to endanger his future. Now if only I could start making better food and drink choices maybe I can get rid of my man boobs.

In other news the CSB website is nearly done (preview here). I'm not entirely happy with certain aspects of the navigation and consistency of font sizes and scaling but I think I'm at the point where enough is enough in terms of fiddling for not much benefit. I'm glad Rowena did the banner because it looks a lot better than I would have managed.

The last two BF2 matches we played we won so all is good on that front. Two more matches this week which I hope to miss due to a baby arrival, the one tomorrow night is getting close (and we should win it).

Work wise all is going well, apart from being very busy losing Paul to Google - I heard from him and he started this week - I'm sure he'll fit right in eat up that job. I got around to using Truecrypt on my laptop for personal and work related data (my company doesn't provide an encryption solution for the plebs). I feel a bit better knowing that if my laptop is stolen or lost or left at a cafe (*ahem*) that at least I can't be accused of exposing sensitive company or personal information. Now to look at something for home.

I also want to bring some sanity to my home directories and at least have a consistent cygwin/rxvt/putty/ssh configuration on both my laptop and windows PC. It would be even better if I could extend some of that to my Debian server too. I like consistency.

Lots of Things

Soo, where to start? Well I guess where I left off. Last Monday week I flew back from Melbourne after having spent the day at St Kilda with folks. I nearly lost my laptop as I left my bag at Rococo's in St Kilda after lunch as I got dazed and confused when leaving. Anyway got back there about 30mins later and someone had handed it to the staff - phew! Thank you very much to whoever did that - just goes to show there are still good people in the world. I also got sunburnt for the first time in years - it wasn't too bad and it actually felt quite good to get some sun on my skin - being indoors all day just isn't natural. Don't think I'll be doing it again in a hurry though because I heard there's this thing called skin cancer....

Back in Wollongong Callum was happy to see me that night and I enjoyed being back at home. There truly is no place like home.

On Tuesday we went to see Evan and Jo's new baby Bethany at Figtree private. They seem to be doing well and the baby is *ahem* cute *ahem* and looks like them both. That brought back all the memories of Callum's birth and reminded me what we are in for. It will be tough going but well worth it and I can't wait.

Wednesday was off to visit Garth and Rebecca for dinner - mmmmmm pie :)

Last weekend was spent recuperating - I stayed up waaay too late on the Friday night playing BF2 with Brad. The next day I was in limp mode and also had a headache. Cassandra let me doze for an hour or two after taking the boy swimming then I was much better. That afternoon we took Callum bike riding at the PCYC and met up with Brad, Angela, Ben and Alanah. They had heaps of fun and tired themselves out.

On Sunday I got stuck into the mowing and cleaning up all the leaves - got lots more sun into me and felt good. There is still plenty of yard work to do, but since getting nerd glasses I feel the energy slowly returning. I think soon I'll be at the point where my ToDo list stops perpetually growing.

Last night we (=[TP]=) won our match against F-V - woohoo! It feels good to get a win again.

Tonight I went to training only to find they assumed I wasn't coming, so started an hour earlier. That meant they were just finishing as I got there, but that meant I was just in time to go to the pub for a drink for Looch's birthday! It was a doubly excellent night as I got home in time for the Death Pudding match against 3FSJ and we pooned it again!. Two wins in two nights - awesome. Now to not play BF2 until at least the weekend. In the next few days I aim to knock over more of the Country Scrapbooking website as it really needs to get finished soon - lucky they like what I've done so far.

TP LAN

So the LAN went well (Saturday night). Lance and Rance didn't make it, kicka did and Ben _finally_ came late at night. I think he was scared of us. Earlier we bought supplies at Safeway and got Crak's new BBQ gas bottle filled. We got most of the computers up and running - 'Flatout 2' was first (but I couldn't get that working on the laptop) then BF1942. I finally got it working by doing a full reinstall. Between doing that and helping to get all the others set up I didn't end up playing much. It was fun though.

Kicka had a remote control plane simulator program and control device. I don't remember the name of the program but it did make me realise that remote control planes are tricky to fly. I might look at getting the same setup as him as it was quite fun, and cheaper than destroying a real model plane :)

Dinner was beer and a BBQ - I got to be the BBQ man and cook the food. It looked and tasted alright, hope I didn't give anyone food poisoning :s If anything it was overcooked than under. We had found a nice 'Smoky BBQ' sauce at Safeway and it tasted really nice - a bit like the 'Hickory' sauce from Hog's Breath. I left the BBQ in a real mess so I hope Crak is able to clean up his nice shiny new BBQ without too much trouble (he didn't have a decent brush handy).

The night drew on and we took a group photo, I'll have to track down a copy, but it will probably end up on the TP website. It ended around 2.30am after Ben taught Garny a lesson in guitar hero on the PS3. Aaah to have the dexterity and commitment to repetitive tasks of an 18 year old.

All in all the TP guys' appearances were not at all what I was expecting from photos. If I had my eyes closed I could easily pick out every one of their voices in the room after hearing them for 2+ years on teamspeak. Their voice mannerisms matched their other mannerisms perfectly. It always helps to put a face to a name and I think getting together was a good team building experience. I hope that helps us win some matches in the near future as we've had a bad run of late.

Sunday morning we woke up and had a light breakfast. Swoop and I were up at 9.30am and had coffee while waiting for Crak to wake up. Garny didn't managed to wake up before we left for the airport at 11.15am so we missed out on a goodbye. After saying our goodbyes at the airport, I grabbed a coffee and waited for 5mins until Uncle Peter came to pick me up.

Since it was lunch time (a bit earlier than I had planned since Swoop was going back a day earlier) Uncle Peter took me to 'Threshermans' in Carlton for lunch. It was very nice and that whole area shows how much class Melbourne has over other cities. Auntie Josie met us there then we headed back to their place.

Sunday afternoon was spent resting and talking to Peter and Josie. Auntie Josie as usual cooked up a storm (garlic and lemon prawns in linguine, battered fish, scallops and calamari, and the usual antipasto delicioso). From the bakery she'd picked up some 'home style' garlic bread which she told me was just garlic and olive oil (no butter). I'll have to try my had at that because it was so much better than normal garlic bread.

My sister Amanda came for dinner too and it was nice to catch up with her as I didn't think I would have time to. She finishes JMC on Thursday and only has a vocal exam and a written assignment left to do. She's planning a trip back to Wollongong with Patrick for sometime soon after baby arrives. Amanda looks really well and seems happy. She's moving in with Patrick next week to a flat in St Kilda.

All in all a good weekend.

TP LAN

Yay the TP LAN is on!

Swoop and I flew in yesterday on the 6.30am flight from Wollongong to Melbourne. We grabbed a coffee and waited a few minutes for Crak to arrive. We headed back to his and Garny's place and settled in. After changing into our TP golf shirts we grabbed some Subway for lunch and went to play golf at Waterford Valley Gold Course.

It turns out I suck at golf (we'll, what do you judge your first ever performance against?). We spent a lot of time looking for my lost golf balls in the rough. I think I lost around 8 all up but I think we found more than we lost at the end of the day. Crak was pretty good and was the overall winner, Swoop hit a fair few good shots too but struggled to keep his score down. I stopped counting my shots for each hole after about hole 5 - lucky we had a 12 shot cap (which Crak reduced to 10 for me on the back 9). Driving the golf buggy is fun and they were pretty quick. We didn't get busted for having the third person hanging off the back of the two seater buggy, I guess because there weren't too many people about Friday afternoon.

After golf we went to La Porchetta in Glen Waverley for dinner. Pizzas all round. Then back to Crak's place to re-hydrate and try and convince Artanis to come over. He finally did and brought along his 'spare' computer (mobo, cpu, gfx card all sitting on a anti-static bag on a cardboard box. After a few attempts and the onlookers thinking we'd need to call 000, he got it started with alluminium foil sitting underneath the power connecter stuck on with some stickers. Since there was no case the power switch was a screwdriver.

Hurrah! It worked (well it posted, but hasn't got much further than that yet - I guess that's this afternoon's job. I spent a futile hour or to trying to get bf1942 running on the Thinpad T-41. For some reason it starts OK then when you move the mouse at the profile screen it crashes :s. Oh well, the main purpose of this LAN for me wasn't really to play games. I might have some luck with CSS but I'm not really fussed.

After that we played Nintendo Wii sports on Garny's Wii (still haven't met Garny, he was at work yesterday and we were still at golf when he had to leave to go bush for paintballing the next day).

Being the first time I had Wii'ed, I was a little unsure of the controls but picked it up very quickly. It's a great design from Nintendo and been novel and accessible it's not hard to see why it has quickly become the #1 selling console. I think 'active' games will be the way of the future. Just think of BF2 with the old-style 'light-guns' but such that they are much more accurate.

After Wii'ing we all headed off to bed. For some stupid reason my alarm clock on my mobile phone had a 6am reminder in there still so I _still_ got up at 6am today (well, yesterday was 4.45am). Anyways I got back to sleep for a little bit and lay there for a bit because Crak and Swoop are asleep. At 8.30am I thought I'd better get up and do something so here I am :)

Today a few others will be coming round (Ben, Kicka, Lance, Rance) and some gameop friends of Crak. It will be fun. I'm looking forward to the BBQ...

Midweek, The First in November

Monday night was the usual off-bin-week - Cassandra's father stayed but Cheryle couldn't make it. I gave Colin the Mortgage choice backup server that I'd configured to run rsync + backuppc backups of their office server remotely. I also configured Samba so that if their office server dies they can just pick up the backup server and take it to the office and keep working.

Mental note: writeup a howto for this in the backuppc wiki.

Tuesday I went to Kung Fu training and dumped down a few hundred dollars of fees that I hadn't counted or banked. Tammy counted it and Looch is going to update the books and bank it. Oh well, at least it's done now and I can cross of one more thing on the ToDo list, even if it wasn't the nicest way of getting it done.

Wednesday Katy came over and spent the afternoon/evening at our house. Callum was really excited and had a good time with her. Since I had a work change on at 17.30, I met them at Kao Gang Thai restaurant for dinner. As usual the food was excellent and the company even better. Cassandra brought Callum's 'black bag' (portable DVD player) since he was already tired. This gave the three adults a nice chance to catch up. Katy is looking really well and it sounds like she is doing really well at work too. I'm glad.

That night I had to be rude and duck of since TP were short our match against some noobs. We ended up losing (being 3 players short in 10v10 is not easy). The first round I got 0 kills and 16 deaths which is my worst ever in a clan match. Turning up 5 mins late (which was worth it to spend time with Katy) and not having pracced for a week or warmed up didn't hellp. Even so one of their players was a bit sus and we are investigating this further. The second round I did OK - managed to nade a dude, knife a sniper then steal their tank, taking it back to our main and holding it for most of the round. We didn't lose by a lot, and if we had one or two more players we would have won. We realise we need to do some recruiting...

Thursday we had an ultra-sound to see baby again. Baby is doing well and has put on some weight. Cassandra is a little scared that she will be a big baby but it's hard to tell at this stage. We found out that baby is a girl! I'm looking forwared to meeting her. I like the idea of a daughter and it will be intersting to see the difference between her and our son.

I also found out that one of the problems with the Gallant is that the transmission is slipping. I'd suspected this for while. Time to book it in for a transmission service to see if that will help it. Thursday night was spent packing for the TP LAN. Bags packed and ready to go I got to sleep around midnight to try and get some sleep before the 6.30am flight.

Painting and Blinds

Last weekend was spend pulling down the old blinds and repainting the window sills an trim. Saturday the old curtains went down and we took them to the tip. We then washed all the windows and window sills and removed as much mould as we could.

On the way back from the tip we took a detour to the beach so that Callum could play in the sand. It was overcast and cool but he had fun filling his bucket with water and tipping it on our feet. He then had to put sand on our feet before tipping water on them which he thought was really funny. Cassandra and I played along pretending the water was really cold.

We bought ice-creams at Shellharbour and then headed home. I think we ordered in Thai on Saturday night which was a nice treat since we had a bit of 'entertainment' budget money saved up.

Sunday was spent painting. Two coats for the lounge room wasn't enough as you can tell there is green underneath it. Oh well, I should have undercoated but really couldn't be bothered. It all still looks very good.

Couldn't wait to get the new blinds because waking up at 6.15 with the sun glaring in is not fun.

ToDo and ToDon't - update

I've been making progress on items in both lists. I stayed up too late last night (2am) doing the scrap-booking website - oh dear! I spent 2 hours setting up a nice CSS layout only to find it looked terrible in IE7. Now I see what makes good web designers good. In any case, I think I'll do all my testing in IE first, then check it still looks OK in firefox.

Last weekend (yeah I know, long time no update) was derailed with an expected trip to Kung Fu on Saturday morning to fill in. I took Callum with me and he seemed to have a good time. He thinks that Kung Fu is about kicking the soccer ball, playing cricket and running around. He didn't seem interested in actual training but was happy to run around when I ran the kids around. At the end of class he didn't want to leave so we played a bit more cricket and he had fun. By the time we got home we were both tired so the afternoon was pretty lazy.

Sunday morning was another wipe-out after BF2 Saturday night as Cassandra was out scrap-booking. Two things on the ToDon't list knocked off at the same time as I waited up for her past midnight. Unfortunately Sunday was also daylight savings so lost another hour there, meaning getting up for our family photos was not pleasant. Janine Kaye took some awesome photos of us, probably the best we've had since our wedding.

Mental note: create somewhere on this site to store photos.

Anyways Cassandra and I were both tired, funnily enough Callum was doing just fine. I don't really remember much of the rest of Sunday due to my first headache in the 3 weeks since getting nerd glasses. I think Callum spent some of the day perfecting his racing car skills on the computer. I think I got to bed before midnight.

Monday was a late night due to getting home at 9.30pm after problems at work, then doing my e-tax, staying up past midnight :s. Cassandra helped me finish and submit it on Tuesday night. Looks like we are getting a little bit of money back. The rest of the week was fairly standard.

Cassandra had a regular appointment with our obstetrician last night and we got to hear baby's heartbeat again. Not long now baby... not long now...

Things I'm Doing, October '07 Edition

Here is a list of things I'm working on at the moment. Hopefully this list will help keep me focussed.

• Country Scrapbooking Website (zen-cart, phpbb, coppermine gallery)
• Cleaning the house for the imminent arrival of "baby"".
• My e-tax :(
• SCMAA PCYC Books and banking.
• Fix the Galant.
• Clean up the back yard.
• Remove household mould.

Now in a world first, the things I want to but should _NOT_ be doing. I call this my ToDon't list:

• Play too much Battlefield 2.
• Stay up too late (say, past midnight. see above).
• Fix up the BF2 Tracker block on the Team Phoenix web site.
• Pretty up this blog.
• Get my VAX 4000/60 running OpenVMS and/or NetBSD/VAX.
• Edit the videos taken but still stored on the cam-corder.
• Get the old 8mm and MiniDV video tapes converted to DVD.
• Paint and fill the skirting boards.

Number2

Well I'm fresh out of material. Maybe Cassandra is right and this won't last a month.

OK, I guess I can do the weekend. Cassandra was out scrapbooking so Callum and I went swimming in the morning. We spent 4h cleaning the scummy bathroom (well, Callum got bored after 1h which was still pretty good. He had fun in his gumboots at least. Umm, after that we went to the PCYC for a bike ride and I played around with our new video camera (JVC Everio MG135). We then played on the swings then I carried him back to the car as little legs had run out.

Sunday was another day of shopping and cleaning, getting ready for the baby. Alyson, Mark and Isaac came around for dinner and Callum had a good play. After that I cleaned out all my old clothes to go that big clothes heaven in the sky. I labelled each shelf in my wardrobe so that I don't end up just chucking stuff in until it won't close anymore. It looks a little obsessive-compulsive but at least Cass made me a label for my "transition" shelf which she aptly titled "passed the sniff test" :D

Now I bet _that_ organisation doesn't last a month!

A New Hope

Well, no hope really. As you can see I've set up a pyblosxom blog. I "borrowed" the main design from Andreas Viklund because he's kind enough to open source his designs. I then screwed around with the colours and fonts and other bits and pieces, then "flavourised" it to my liking.

Knowing me, which if you are reading this you probably do, you'll realise I had fun just setting it up and will probably never touch it again. Well, I hope not. It would be nice to keep a blog, I like the idea, but I'm not sure it's for me. Well, we'll see how long it lasts.