dale's thoughts

Still Here

Yes, I'm still here. Long time no blog. I kinda lost my mojo but I think it's coming back.

Let's see what happened during the remainder of January and this first week of February...

Family Photos

In there we had some family photos taken by Janine which turned out really well. All I remember from that day was being really tired which is a curse of mine on photo days. My dodgy narrow eyes meant that Janine needed to come back another day to take some more shots to make me look normal. I'm really happy with the way they turned out as they really capture the personalities in our family.

Katy came to visit

Catching up with friends always makes me realise just how little time I do devote to staying in touch. With Katy visiting came the promise to also take time to go and visit her on my holidays which should be good. Now to actually organise it (mental note get Cassandra to organise it or I will forget). That day made opened my eyes to the fact that some people I think I know aren't actually the people I think they are, which means I don't actually know what or who they are. I would have said I was pretty good at pegging someone's personality after only spending a minute or two with them but now I think this is actually quite naive. It was good to catch up and I'm looking forward to the next visit which _should_ be soon, so that I can find out what new adventures she is looking forward to.

Amanda visit

Umm, Amanda came to visit in there too on her way back from Lord Howe island. I sent with her $50 and an express post satchel for her to buy me some Genovese coffee from Melbourne which I received the other day - yum yum! Duh only now do I realise that you can buy it online and they have a Sydney store. Ahh the power of the internets. She has moved in with Patrick and all is going well.

Lion Dance Season

Yes it is that that time of the year meaning lots of lion dances. We had a wedding a few weeks ago, and we also did the Illawarra/Bulli Folk Festival. Tomorrow we have Oriental Expressions at lunch time (and also Sunday lunch time) and King's Restaurant in the evening. I think I might strap my ankle just in case because it still hasn't healed properly from when I sprained it last April-ish. I really should put some time into the Southern Crane Website as it hasn't been updated since last lion dance season. I should also post here a video of one of our performances too.

Holidays

I asked for and received the whole of February off of work. I took just over a week of annual leave to cover Friday the 1st of Feb, and the 3rd of March (the day after what will hopefully be my 30th birthday). In there was 3 weeks of long service which means I have another 7 to take! Woohoo!. The first week off has been great and I am really enjoying spending time at home with Cassandra and the kids. I'm also getting started on my perpetual list of things to do (which Cassandra has merged into an Open Office spreadsheet for us to track our progress and keep me honest.

So far I've set up her mum's new computer (put together and Athlon X2 miniATX system from pieces for her with WinXP) which worked out a lot cheaper for her than buying a pre-built system. I've also cleaned out my side of the kitchen cupboard and installed new shelves for Cassandra to move her scrap-booking stuff into, with the long term goal of moving everything out of the study to be Annie's room. I've setup backuppc backups of Cassandra's new Dell laptop which including stuffing around trying to get cygwin rsyncd to run under vista but I finally got there.

I've also chucked out all the jewel cases of my music CDs and put them in a big CD wallet binder thingy along with the album art. This should save a fair bit of space and also improve the random seek times of my music collection. One day they will all be mp3 or ogg'ified.

I spent a few hours the other night fixing up the GameArena BF2 IRC match bot to include the custom maps used by GA. One day I'll tidy up the scripts I wrote to extract the information and put them up somewhere.

Precious Beth

The most painful news: my closest friend found out that their baby Bethany was born with Lissencephaly. She is 3 months old and in all likelihood stay at that mental age for the rest of her life, which will not be a full one. On their page you can find out more about the condition if you so wish. The first few days I felt absolute sorrow for her, but now I realise that she is not the one to feel sorry for, as she will never no any different and unlikely to feel any pain. It is her parents that I will always be sad for. There is nothing that can be done to help other than to continue to extend any and all support and help that they are willing to accept. It makes me feel so lucky that our two kids are happy and healthy and no matter how hard it is with them I know they have a good life. In our minds Annie was supposed to grow up with Bethany and we had grand plans of play-dates. Before they were both born I even joked about how we could "race" them (being only six weeks apart) and now that thought will haunt me for ever. Annie will be a constant reminder of what my friends are so close to having but not able to have. I promise I will never take life for granted ever again.

Grant and Jenna Engaged!

Happy news! I'm getting an official sister-in-law! Congratulations to my nerdy brother and his nerdy fiance who are perfect for each other. May you live long and prosper together (or whatever the Star Wars/Transformers/LOtR/Dr. Who equivalent saying is).

Callum's First Day of Pre-School

Number 1 started pre-school this week. We moved him because we can get 3 days of pre-school-at-a-primary-school for the same price as 1 day of his day-care. The teacher thinks he's bright and switched on, which is because we always read to him and taught him his letters from a very early age. The teacher said he was able to point out to a little girl her name badge when she couldn't recognise her own name herself. I think this is just bad parenting on her parents behalf, placing an unnecessary burden on our already under funded public school system. If there is one thing that I wish this new government could possibly get right is their promise to improve education (though I'm not getting my hopes up). Maybe Callum can teach them a thing or two.

OK, enough, bed time for me. Promise to self to blog again within a week... ish.