April 2009 Archives

It's a miserable day here in the Riverina and I spent much of the day driving around the countryside. This morning I drove to Tumut to pick Dad up to take him to Wagga. I couldn't get over how green it is up around Gundagai and Tumut, and driving back from Tumut to Wagga it's sad to see that the fields around Wagga are still all bare and brown looking. All the rain that we've had the last few days has done little for the drought in these parts.

Dad was all ready when I got to Amity and waited in the car while I brought all his gear out. One of the nurses loaded up a wheelchair and that made the job a bit easier. We had a final look around the main street in Tumut while I quickly ran in and cancelled his paper and Chemist account. Dad was quite taken with the drive; it's been many years since he's been that way and didn't think it would be likely he'd be seeing it again. Kind of sad to be resigned to having a look at something for the last time.

We got to the hostel around 12, just in time for lunch, and as it turned out, he knew 2 people that were at his table. That will certainly make settling in there a lot easier. His room is real cosy, on the end of a row not far from the gazebo that is the designated smoking area.

After I got Dad all settled, I picked up Carly and she did nearly an hour's driving on her Learner's Permit. Talk about a stressful hour. I've decided that next time she can go with a driving instructor and I'll pay for one lesson and she can pay for another one. I'm not a good driving teacher, far too short with her and too stressed out. I was gripping the seat in a death grip.

Last Friday we ran the Skate Comp for the April school holiday program and once again it rained and had to be called off. Prizes were given out for the scooters from the last washed out comp, and we managed to get through all the bikes this time, so they got prizes as well. This photo is of Alex on a borrowed BMX getting some air before he drops into the big bowl.

Alex and Jake at Alex's birthday lunch

Carly at Alex's birthday lunch

Jake at Alex's birthday lunch

Scarlett enjoying herself at Alex's birthday lunch

I had a day off work and took Alex to Borambola for the YouthRoc camp. He'll be there till Wednesday afternoon so I have the house to myself for a few days. He went last year and was keen to go again when I suggested it.

From Borambola I drove in to Wagga and picked up Carly for her apprenticeship signing. We've been waiting for this to happen all year so we were both pretty pleased that she's finally signed up. She'll attend TAFE one day a week and we got her kit and uniform for the course. La Porchetta covered the cost until the cheque from the apprenticeship people arrives, so it felt like a bit of a shopping spree. The kit has everything you could think of for the kitchen, so may knives that I didn't know what they were for (just as well Carly did).

Now if I could just get her to cook for me occasionally!

I spent a couple of hours last week at Lauren's trying to get the shared internet connection to work but with no luck. I think it has something to do with the ad-hoc wireless setup. The firewall refuses to start and so ICS won't work either. A even tried a system restore to get thinkgs back to normal but that didn't work either. I spent another few hours today trying to get it to work but without much luck again. I set up a proxy server as an alternate solution to ICS but Carly wasn't impressed, her browser crashed every 5 minutes. I'm at a loss.