Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm back, oh yeah!
So why did I abandon my blog? I don't know, I guess there were too many things going on in my life that took priority and the blog needed to sit on the back burner for a while. I just didn't feel like doing it. For a while I was tired and lost interest in a lot of things so it's probably a good thing I didn't put anything down on paper.
Since September, it's been business as usual with the major highlights mainly coming from watching Annabelle growing up and from being able to see how our relationship is forming. She turned one in December - I guess you had to be there - it was a good day for her: snooze for a bit, eat, snooze, get pampered, snooze etc. You get the idea. There is video of the cake time that I need to sit down and edit then put on a DVD. By her birthday she was beginning to walk and has now almost mastered it. She still falls down and resorts to speed crawling at times, mainly to catch up to me. She has her own gobbly-de-gook language that she reads books out loud with and sings happy randomness to herself. She has a very happy but fragile personality. I love making her laugh.
Callum has been growing up and we've been playing a lot of backyard soccer. He's pretty good at saving goals and his kick is becoming stronger. It helps him with fitness and coordination but really tires him out. His tiredness and other complaints led us to consult a doctor(s) and get blood tests done but they came back clear. Put it down to growing pains I hope, as my Dad mentioned I went through a similar thing as a child.
Somewhere in there Callum became really good at reading and can read whole books. Not bad since he hasn't started school yet. A few weeks ago we were going through some more complicated math stuff, like adding and subtracting in the order of tens and adding and subtracting other units like thousands and millions. He seemed to get the idea (I used an analogy of people giving him bananas). Note that if someone gives you a million bananas you don't have a million bananas but rather a belly ache! His writing has improved and he wrote all his own Christmas cards.
Work wise it's been a bit of a struggle to stay motivated with all the things happening at work and knowing that I have the whole of February off on leave. The last few days at work around Christmas/New Year were really quiet, which goes to show that if you just leave the stupid computers alone then they'll be fine and you don't need to do much.
Kung Fu was pretty busy with the Links to Learning program. I ended up teaching Lion Dance to three of the Links kids which they performed at their graduation. They only had two weeks to learn it so they put in a great effort after school and on weekends to learn it and pull it off with the help of the regular team of boys. As a side effect of losing a bit of weight, training has been a lot easier and much more fulfilling. Both go hand in hand but it's nice when an improvement in one area of my life leads to improvements in other areas. I still need to sit down and do the previous years reports for Fair Trading. If only we had an accountant in our ranks.
At about the same time I stopped updating my blog I backed right off of BF2 since it was consuming valuable time. The ladder seasons have finished and there aren't a lot of people playing. The TP website and teamspeak have been pretty vacant of late. I bought TF2 on steam and have been playing that for something a little different. It's OK but it doesn't have the same immersiveness that I get out of BF2.
Somehow we survived Christmas - it's a crazy time of year. It has made me realise that I need to concentrate on catching up with the people close to me a lot more and be pro-active at maintaining friendships. I hope to be better at this in the future and start putting people first rather than be lazy or insular. I wish life were less hectic and weekends were longer. I guess that's what holidays are for. Note to self, adhere to self imposed 11pm-ish curfew.
The future... hmm. Here is what I would like to do, in no particular order:
- Blog more frequently, perhaps daily.
- Get our home extension built. Actively call architects etc and get the show on the road.
- Read more. I don't mean Google Reader/Forums etc, I mean real-life honest-to-goodness paper books. Maybe even buy some textbooks that I am interested in.
- Play with the kids more. No more lazy TV time. Turn off the third parent.
- Fiddle with micro-controllers. Put what I did at uni to use for fun.
- Write more programs. Try and keep my brain fresh.
- Watch some cricket. Maybe even go to a match.
- Spend money. Stop being such a tighty-tight-tight-arse. Spend some money on computer hardware that would make my life easier.
- Garden. Tidy it up. Stop having the crap-est looking front yard in the street. Grow and eat some veggies.
Sigh, I'll get there one day...
