Recently in Personal Category

 

I finally accomplished something while I've been home on holidays. The shelves have been sitting around for six months waiting to be put up. First, no-one could find the charger for the portable drill, then when Alex found it I still procrastinated. I really wish I could work on that. Not to worry, they're up now and they look good.

Carly and I went to Wagga after I picked her up from school yesterday and we bought clothes to wear to Nanna's funeral today. This morning I went to the hairdresser and had gold tips put in my hair and it was so lovely to have a head massage. It makes me want to go back every week. The hairdresser here in Junee is lovely and she remembered Nanna from her visits to Cooinda Court to cut all the residents' hair.

My Uncle is coming down from Queensland for Nan's funeral. It's the first time he's back to Wagga in over 10 years so I'm glad he'll get to see everyone again. He hasn't met any of my grandchildren yet, and my sister hasn't seen him since he left. I'm picking Christine and her son Matt up around 2.

Dad's back in hospital too. I received a shock email on Monday night telling me to ring the Tweed hospital and I thought "heart attack" initially. I didn't think I'd even be here to make the funeral, but he'll go home later today. He's having breathing problems and had a bit of a chest infection so they kept him in to pump him full of antibiotics. I didn't get to speak to him and all the hospital staff sounded very positive, so I can only assume that everything's alright.

Carly and Alex are back tomorrow after over 2 weeks of school holidays, but Wednesday they'll be having the day off to attend their great-grandmother's funeral service.

I've seen very little of Alex during the break. He's up early and off on his scooter or bike, and comes home when he's hungry, then gone again. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be a 13-year-old who's biggest worry is being allowed to have friends sleep over. Carly is home more often, and has had friends stay every other night, but she also helps to keep the house tidy and that's usually cleaning up after Alex.

Mum dropped around today and she's in much better spirits. We talked about the funeral arrangements, who would drive who, and what we needed to do afterwards for the wake. It will be held at Warren and Julie's house and we'll organise the food and drink beforehand.

Little Riley has been very sick too. He spent Friday and Saturday nights in hospital, with Lauren sleeping in the chair next to his cot. He has a bacterial infection in his chest. When I looked after him last weekend I told Lauren he was very rattly in the chest, but her doctor wasn't too concerned and kept telling her to give him pain relief. She took him to a different doctor on Friday afternoon who sent them both straight to the hospital. We called in yesterday to see them, and Riley is very pale but as usual he had big smiles for everyone. Even when he's sick he's still a calm, quiet child. After this course of antibiotics we'll probably see him thrive. I hope so, anyway.

Emily has only 4 1/2 weeks left and 2 more weeks of work. Then we'll have grandchild number 4. She's organised a birthday party for Scarlett next Saturday at Noah's Ark in Wagga with lots of other little 1-year-olds. Alex is rapt, he loves Noah's Ark, and is already talking about taking Zeke on the big slides. Football is in Junee next weekend so we should get there on time.

Yesterday at 2 pm my grandmother passed away. She'd been in and out of hospital quite a lot this year with breathing problems, and Mum and Reg were with her yesterday when she passed.

I'm so glad we got around to getting the 5 generations on camera, we talked about it for a long time before we actually all went up to the nursing home where Nanna was. I remember she had a wonderful time with Zeke, he went around the place saying "Hello Nanna" to every old lady he saw and they were all so taken with him. Nan especially. Every time I visited her after that she would ask how Zeke was.

As fate would have it, I never got to the hospital to visit her this time. The nursing home rang me last weekend to say that the doctor had admitted her, and no-one could contact Mum. I caught up with Mum after lunch and she said for me not to worry about it, she would go up, which she did when I left her house. Then later in the week as I drove past the hospital I thought that I should call in, but didn't get around to it. There's always something that you regret when someone close to you dies.

Nanna lived most of her adult life in Sydney, and worked at the Strawberry Hills Mail Exchange for much of that time. In the early 90s she sold her terrace house in Redfern and bought a unit in Wagga to be close to Mum. We saw quite a lot of her then. She moved to the nursing home in Junee in early 2007. I remember our trips to Sydney and staying with Nanna, and she always had bread and jam on the table after every meal. When we got older she'd take us to the South Sydney Leagues Club which was just a couple of blocks from where she lived. She didn't mind a drink or a flutter on the pokies.

Last Thursday I put Carly and Alex on the train to spend 6 days with their father at Cowra, and today I'll pick them up from the train. I don't know where the days have gone because it only feels like a couple of days since they left. They'll get the bus from Cowra to Cootamundra, then the train from Coota to Junee. I rang Carly when I got home from work on Thursday to make sure they got there ok and they were at Peter's safe and sound.

I started two weeks holidays on Friday, and Saturday Lauren and Daniel brought the boys over to spend the night with me. The were so good and I had no problem at all although I was a little worried, because usually Carly and Alex are here to keep them entertained.

Saucepans and wooden spoons are still a favourite with kids. Zeke and Riley had a great time making lots of noise.

It's been cold and raining, and apart from a visit with Mum and Reg, I've spent the time at home, and yes, on the computer. Reg got me to look at his computer while I was there and it is so slow. After checking I saw it only had 128 MB RAM, so I offered my old computer to them, which I will add another 512 MB stick, giving them about 1 GB of RAM. They'll be thrilled. That's something I can work on in the next week.

Friday is the skate competition that the Council runs during the school holidays, and with Nikki (Council's Community Development Officer) on maternity leave, it's up to me to run it. Last week I did two movie bus trips for her. Monday was the senior kids, and there were 26 of us. Wednesday was the littlies with their parents and there were 64 of us. I got to watch movies on those days, and had no problems at all with the kids, they were all great. Today I got out of taking a bus to the Handstand Factory in Wagga and one of the other girl's from work is taking them. Friday will be full-on, with setting up and taking entries, but two kids came in to work last Friday and asked to do the judging and commentating for the skate comp so that's one less thing I have to worry about.

Yesterday I received an invoice from Getty Images for $1,320 AUD tor using a copyright image on my Junee Magic website. I was in shock for most of the rest of the day.

I gave Junee Magic an overhaul a couple of months ago because I don't want to offer web design services, my life is too busy these days, and the image is long gone. However, the invoice came with a snapshot of my site (God knows how old it was) and the image was a 72 x 100 thumbnail of a head. Not only can I not afford to pay that sort of money, I refuse to pay that sort of money for a tiny image. I found the image using Google Search about 5 years ago and didn't consider copyright. I know I should have and I'm conscious of that these days, but back then I was just looking for an image to fit the content.

I sent off a quick email to Getty, congratulating them on finding the image, because nobody ever found the website to offer me any work and I made zilch from the site as a web design business. These days I have a real job that pays real money and I'll be damned if I'm giving that hard-earned money to extortionists.

When I got home from work last night I found plenty of forum discussions with lots of people who had received the same letter of demand going back to 2005, though each one quoting different copyright laws depending on their particular country. Most of the advice said to immediately remove the image and ignore the demand. I had already removed the image before I received the demand, and will do my best to ignore it, though I imagine down the track there will be a debt collector harassing me for the money.

I have 21 days to pay the $1,320 and no excuses will be considered. I believe it's common practice to first send a "cease and desist" letter before asking for compensation but that didn't happen.

Here's a comment I found on another site:

I wish I hadn't been so quick to reply to them and am still not 100% sure whether to be worried or not.

It was bitterly cold at football again today but the Under 13s had a fantastic win against Gundagai, 52 - 0. Alex played fullback and scored a try today too. He was in the play alot today and I thought he was away earlier in the game, he was running for his life in front of the pack but got pulled down. Good effort though.

After football we went to Wagga to buy Riley his toybox and a birthday present for Zeke. Lauren had organised a party for 2 pm so we didn't have much time for browsing. Alex picked a pair of over-sized "The Hulk" boxing gloves that made a roaring sound when you hit something for Zeke. He was thrilled when he got them and all his other presents were forgotten while he ran around after the other kids.

The house was full of kids and their parents, Daniel's mum and sister, friends and family. We were getting hungry too by the time we got there and Lauren had little party pies and sausage rolls that didn't last long. Lauren made two excellent-looking cakes that tasted as good as they looked.

Zeke is a "Thomas the Tank" nut at the moment so his cake had Thomas on the top. Riley is Lauren's Riley Bear so his was a bear covered with coco pops.
 

Carly and Scarlett.
 

Daniel with Zeke. It's Zeke's birthday on Tuesday.
 

Riley turned one on Monday and he loved his party.
 

It was 2 years ago today that Graham died and I remembered him tonight with a few songs that he loved to listen to. Lauren and I had a bit of a chat about it today, but I'm glad I had the birthday party to go to because my new word for the day would have been maudlin.

I downloaded Firefox today and sent an email to all staff recommending they do the same. The Mozilla site was labouring under the demand from users and it took two attempts to download. At around 2pm there had been around 2 million downloads. At 6 pm the figure had passed 5 million, and at 8 pm another 600,000 had downloaded Firefox. I think Mozilla were hoping for 5 million and they easily got there. I'd say that's a record that will be hard to beat.

Work was crazy for the last couple of days. We've got a tree planting project in the works and it's aimed at people who have larger-than-normal blocks on the outskirts of town. Junee has a salinity problem and the tree planting is aimed at reducing the problem. I had to come up with a mailing list of all the property owners, and using our mapping software and lots of patience we got all the letters sent out late this afternoon. It's business paper week as well this week and our Planning Department had more reports than usual for the monthly Council meeting so it's been pretty hectic. This afternoon I managed to catch up a bit and the pressure should be off for the rest of the week.

Carly and I went along to a Body Balance class at the gym tonight, and I feel totally s.t.r.e.t.c.h.e.d...... I enjoy the class. It's hard work and muscles are stretched to the limit but they end the class with a very relaxing wind-down. You listen to gentle music with a lavender-filled bag over you eyes, and the smell and the music is very soothing. Alex spent the time at the skate park but beat us home. It's cold out.

My youngest grandson turned one yesterday and we went to Wagga after work to wish him a happy birthday. He got lots of new clothes and toys and seemed to find great delight in the ribbon that wrapped his present. We were only there half an hour and he was crashed out spread eagle on his back, exhausted with all the excitement of the day.

Emily and Kai arrived with Scarlett the same time we did. Em's looking very pregnant with still 2 months to go. We had fish and chips for tea, a nice easy meal with no cleaning up. Zeke is 3 next Tuesday so they're having a combined party next Saturday.

Did you know?
The number of poisoned web sites is increasing.
1 in 1000 web pages are infected with malicious drive-by downloads.
source IDG News

For the last two days I've been sick and haven't gone to work. It's cold and raining and snowing above 1500 metres so I'm not sorry that I'm here in front of the heater instead of being at work.

Image via WikipediaAlex is home today too. He's had headaches every day this week. Bad ones that a panadol doesn't fix. I remember when I was his age I used to get them too. I think it's probably a puberty thing, though if he gets too bad I'll take him to the doctor. We're both home and feeling miserable but he's hassling me to go to Wagga to pick up his bike wheel that we left at the shop last weekend. If we don't go today it might be another week before we can get it. He re-spoked his back wheel but it ended up with a buckle, and the guys in the shop said they would have to redo it. Tomorrow the football is at 12 and the bike shop closes at 1 so we couldn't go after the game. As much as I don't want to go, I guess I'll have to.

I've been a slacko with the gym this week. Monday was a public holiday and I haven't been feeling well so I dragged out my workout machine and got into it on Wednesday night. I'd forgotten what a tough workout it gives you. It's mainly leg work with lots of stomach crunches. What I need! Tonight the social club from work are all going out to the Illabo Hotel for drinks and a meal. They've organised a bus to take everyone there and home but I gave my apologies this morning. I'm not feeling up to it and I know that on Monday I'm going to keep hearing about how good it was and how I should have gone. There'll be other nights...

Okay, it's now 3.30 and we went over to Wagga, only to be told that the rim wasn't done yet. They've had it for a week for God's sake! I was quite angry but could do little about it except to go back early tomorrow morning before football. Not impressed at all, especially with petrol so high at the moment, I could have done without another trip to Wagga.

Remember...
If one is lucky...
a single fantasy can totally transform a million realities.
Maya Angelou

The Queen's Birthday weekend was traditionally celebrated with "cracker night" on Saturday nights, but the tradition has dwindled since the laws around permits came in. Over the weekend we've seen many fireworks going off around Junee, and only one lasted any great length of time. Most are hit and miss affairs, with people running out to set of a couple of crackers and run back inside waiting to see if they get caught, then running out and doing it again. It was no different here last night when around midnight, Alex and his mate Jake disappeared and then followed the noise of a few bungers going off. They came back in laughing and carrying on. I've had fireworks in the cupboard for a couple of years and wouldn't give Alex the lighter to let any off. He found the matches instead.

Alex, Jake and I went to Wagga last night and had tea at Golden Seasons, an eat-all-you-can restaurant, before going to the movies to watch Iron Man. It was a great film and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. Robert Downey Jr plays the lead role of a wealthy industrialist who is forced to build an armoured suit after a life-threatening incident, he ultimately decides to use its technology to fight against evil. In this case, Jeff Bridges is the evil opponent, and I had a hard time recognising him. Bald and big, and sporting a big beard, it took me a moment to work out who he was. Of course, the kids didn't care who he was, he was just one of the bad guys. The technology in the film is incredible, with all these robotic helpers aiding Downey to build his suit. I was in awe of the computer equipment he had. Really worth watching.

We called up to Lauren's before the movie and poor Lauren is sick with the flu and was in bed. The boys were fine though, and Alex and Jake played with Zeke and Riley for an hour. Riley is taking a few steps and standing up without the aid of anything. His birthday is next Monday so I'd best pull my finger out and look for that toy box he wants. We're back to normal next weekend with both Carly and Alex playing footy, and I'm hoping they're home games.