Festivities

Its that time of the year again; Queues, heat, time spent with the family, and above all... poor driving.  Maybe its a bit negative to say above all, but its up there.  My bum is sore from sitting on the wooden bench outside, but socialising comes at a price.

On a positive note, people are generally pretty joyful, which makes up for any discomfort in the car, or around the pool.

Happiness however does nothing for the stench on Nahoon beach.  If I wanted a foecal accompaniment to my beach walk, I would have brought the dogs... instead, we strolled in the presence of a wicked bats cave hangover.

I hope everyone is in a home, near family, or family to be :)  Love you guys, and encourage you to look past the rough exterior of life - an ongoing battle - and wait on a new year; new challenges, opportunities and other good stuff. God has a purpose and plan for you life, live in it! Blessings.

Country Roads

I was driving to work this morning; irritated by the latest batch of community road works.  Failed by local government the community has taken it upon themselves to repair the 2km of tarmac from the edge of suburbia  into the valley.  The lack of residing civil engineers evident in their choice of material.  While broken glass has a good rock/sand heritage, and a natural abundance in the valley... was it the best choice for filling potholes?

In order to get through the sea I floored it and almost meleed 6 chickens that were crossing the road.

Two nights ago I almost hit a cat.  Turns out the cat had wings.  A flying cat is a terrifying thing and I breathed deeply when I realised it was an owl.  Turns out owls haven't adapted to 'living with cars and roads'.  Then I almost blind sided the owl.

I got into my car on Wednesday morning, reversed down the drive then discoverd a passenger.  It looked like an Oreo biscuit with 6 legs, wings, horns, a bullet proof vest and a loud hailer.

Sick Day

Ironically today, the subject of my post, was probably the most boring day Ive had in the last 5 or 6... infact, until lunch time the only item of interest was a bowl of muesli.  Beware muesli.

Another irony is that its 6pm, and Im still at work...

And its at this point that I have the niggling sense that someone, somewhere... is having more fun than me.  And now that someone, somewhere is going to experience an unplanned bowel movement if they're also tucking into a bowl of tropical crunch.

Eye Test

Today's lunch was spent in queues.  Turns out 8-5 is your most productive time during the day, and when you have a job, you have to compress everything you used to do in those 9hrs into lunch.

The longest queue was getting out of the car park at the bank.  Parking-spot-choice fail.  The ATM was mild, although there was someone standing awkwardly close behind me.  Second last stop was an eye test at the traffic dept.  Good times.

So the eye test involved staring into their machine at some squares, each time one had a different pattern. I was pleased to see something other than those coster numbers.  I got to block 7 and went all teary eyed.  I got it wrong.  I always get the last one wrong... which got me thinking.  At what point do you fail an eye test?  Is it an in-joke amongst traffic department eye testers that they push you until you break.

"Yes sir, in the car park across the road is a white car... on the car is a leaf... on the leaf is a wasp... how many rings does it have on its belly, and what colour are they?"

"Red?  Aah, OK, uuhhhhhhh... out the window you'll see a plane taking off, theres a woman sitting in the third row..."

Either way, the smallest things you have to watch out for on the road are dogs... and if its so far away that you have to squint - you're not in danger of hitting it.  Unless its very small... in which case its probably Ryan's rat.  Ryan needs a rat sitter for the vac, call him.

Unfamiliarity breeds contempt

This weekend was characterized by unfamiliarity.

First, least important, was a game of touch rugby - not much to report there other than I seem to have gotten slower.

Saturday was a day at the theatre, the whole day.  See here for the 'why'...  The theatre is pretty disturbing... knives, thrones, masks and theatrical junk lying everywhere.  I almost got taken out by a curtain rail... actually, everyone almost got taken out by a curtain rail. You always feel like there could be someone hiding under a robe or box, probably one of those role-playing-game kids, waiting to stab you with a handy prop.

Lastly I got subbed into the bar at half-time, not the touch rugby.... the theatre, and found myself again in unchartered waters.  Lots of awkwardness, little productivity and some free drinks in my haste to get rid of people...

Kept in stitches

Its been a week since my trip to medicross and thus the stitches needed to come out.  We had movie night last night and during a tea break Dr Juliet suggested she remove them for me.

Ive never had stitches and wasn't aware that you could just wip them out, but it seemed like the alpha male thing to do, so I accepted her offer.  I was unfortunately out gunned by new friend Rudy who told me that he usually takes his own out with a nail clipper.

So the removal went 75% according to plan, the other 25% is still in my chin and will apparently come out when future-Rog is shaving.

My signature move

Much has happened since the last post.  Firstly, I pinned down the eye problem I was having, which coincidentally has calmed - it was a hay fever spin off.  Glad to see the back of that and to see in general.

Then on Friday night we had a skating event at SBC live - I was killing time in the car park before we had our meeting and again managed to pull off my signature move - falling - landed on my chin and ended up at medi-cross on a bed fielding phone calls from leaders who were worried they'd be late.

Saturday consisted of soft foods and liquids, the return to bread on sunday night was great and I even put away some muesli this morning.

Beware: muesli.

The last bit of news was the first snake-sighting in the valley.  It was small.  I still hate snakes.  It was slithering over the steps when I got home on Saturday.  I intend on dispatching as many snakes as possible to the other side.  Im not talking about the fence.

The winds of change

I knew something was up when I got Saturday headache on Friday, summer is definitely here and my body is in shock.  Ive had an eye twitch for about 10 days.  I hear its stress.  I changed my contact lenses and dimmed my pc screen at work in an attempt to subdue it.  Its 8:05, eye currently playing ball.

Ive been accused of mass hospitality.  Don't get any ideas people.  Theres been an in joke about hospitality running for a while amongst friends and other gifts we'd rather have.  If you don't know it, never mind.

Im contemplating a trip to the traffic dept this week some time.  Watch this space.

As for the dude who sang our national anthem... I thought they could have made more use of the bongo drum.  His side kicks clearly weren't as comfortable playing in front of a big crowd as he was.

8:13, no twitch.

Blood donations

Giving blood is a bit of an anomaly, on one hand its obviously a good idea, you never know when you'll need some and I'm sure statistically you giving a pint every now and then ups the chances of blood being available for you when the unfortunate time comes...  Of course, realistically, the real positive bit lies in giving someone else blood.

But you still get stuck with at least two needles and have that arm inflater pressure tester wrapped around your gun.

The only way to sway the balance is to make good on the free biscuits and juice.  I work on a pound for pound basis on the biscuits and as much juice as it takes to knock back the carbs.

Catch Up

I have a lot to say.

After I moved to the country a number of unfortunate events ensued, culminating in me leaving my pc with the IT guy from work for a few days. In my haste to get the pc fixed I forgot to backup my address book and consequently lost everyone's email address, including the mail group I had created for weekly emails, and because I never hear from most of you, I cant remember who I used to send too... and internet in the valley is poor at best, so I've decided to centralize comms and start a blog. It had to happen sooner or later.

So I moved flat, into Horse Shoe Valley. Which is sort of like a neighbour to Cambridge... which is not very descriptive because you all think I live in Amalinda now... fail. If you can imagine the N2 runs past Cambridge, toward Gonubie and edges past Abbotsford... HSV runs the length of this area, on the other side of the N2. I live on a small holding. I have a view, ponies and more space. I am happy.

Our office party this year has become an contentious issue. We've hired the Guild Theatre for a night, one night only, and are putting on a show... to show off our work, etc. I put the 'etc' in because we haven't really decided what else to show off, or what else we could show off.

More to come soon. Peace.