Recently in Personal Category

Here it is, another week gone by. The good news: my hand doesn't appear to be broken. The bad news: my car needs a power steering rack that is going to cost $860.

Tuesday I had an xray done on my hand, and from what I could see (Dr Toni) it looks pretty normal. I'll need to go back to the doctor and have him confirm that, but I think it's getting better. The Doc told me to take Voltarin, an anti-inflammatory that has made much of the swelling go down.

Thursday I put the car in for a service, and to check out where the power steering oil is going to, and the news was a shocker. Unfortunately it's one of those things that left unfixed, will end up a more expensive repair job, so I have to bite the bullet and pay the money to have it repaired.

...Footy: Junee Under 12s 56 def Harden 0...

Today we went to Booroowa for football. I'd never been to Booroowa before, it's a small town on the other side of Harden (another small town), this side of Young (a slightly bigger town). It took us and hour and a half to get there, and as usual, I missed the turn-off on the way home and we ended up at Yass. There's a big MacDonalds there, so we had a feed and turned around and drove back home, getting home 2 hours later than we should have, but we had nothing better to do so it turned into an adventure. A couple of police cars screamed past us with sirens flashing on our way home (going the other way), so I fear there must have been a bad accident behind us. It's enough to make you slow down a tad and enjoy the scenery.

I should mention that Alex scored a try and kicked a goal today. Yesterday he finally got his mop cut off and is looking a little more respectable. I'd post a photo, but the camera is still broken, and I tried to return it to the shop today but the shop assistant insisted it had been dropped and told me to ring Kodak. It looks like it's been dropped too, but it worked fine for a while after that, now there's a lens error. Maybe it needs dropping again. As usual, nobody dropped it in the first place!

Remember...
A dream is woven from thin air and nothing…
Embroidered with wishes and everything...
Then filled with the padding of hope and delight.
James W. King

It's been a long week and I'm grateful it's Friday and there's no football tomorrow. (The boys have a bye). I think I have a broken hand, or finger. Last Friday morning I woke up with a very swollen left hand, and my knuckles so swollen that I had a terrible time taking off my rings. I tripped on the fan in my bedroom on Thursday night, and put my hand out to stop myself from falling, and although I didn't think I'd hurt it, it's still swollen and sore after a week. And no, I haven't been to a doctor.

I can type so I can work, and I imagine in time it will go back to normal. (I hope!) I've discovered that you can't take things for granted, and you need two good hands to do many things. Simple things like unbuttoning your jeans to go to the loo, picking up the coffee jar with your left hand, and scrubbing white socks. But life goes on...

I moved into the new office at work on Monday, and today I feel a little more settled. Drawers need going through, a few things tossed out, but that will have to wait for a rainy day when there's little else to do. I've inherited the main email address at work, and now get 50 times the amount of email I've been used to, which I have to forward on or delete. The mail is another thing, it needs to get registered, allocated a file number, and delivered to the right person. That's the hard part: who gets what. The extra work load doesn't seem so bad, I'm not snowed under or anything, but being in an office on my own is new and I miss the jokes and fun we had in my old office. I'll get used to it though, and will probably get more work done as a result.

We got some rain today and the temperatures plummeted. Now it really feels like winter is on the way. Give me sun and heat any time, I'm no snow bunny. Of course, we desperately need the rain. The rivers are so low that I heard on the news that if we don't get some serious rain soon, the price of vegetables will skyrocket with a 500% increase. I think the shops must have watched the same news story, because they've already gone up. A shame, because quite often they don't come back down again. There could be hard times ahead.

The football comp started yesterday and our Under 12s team played two games against Young, who have so many players they can field two teams. The competition is fiercer this year and the boys certainly felt the hard tackles and the seriousness of the Young teams. We're playing on the full-size field this year, with 13 aside.

The first game we won 24-4, but during the first half there was very little in it. We were up 6-0 at half time. Game two we won convincingly 36-0, but the score doesn't reflect the type of play. We defended well, and managed to make a few good breaks to score. A great start to the season.

I scored both games, then spent an hour in the canteen so the ladies could have a break. Then I spent the afternoon washing the jumpers, and I always love how they look on the clothes line. I got in early with the jumpers: better a dry day when they're not covered with mud.

A Happy Easter to everyone! It's Sunday and I've spent most of the day with family, first visiting my Nanna in the old folks' home and then my Mum and stepfather. Tonight Lauren, Daniel and Zeke are coming over for a baked leg of lamb and I might crack open a bottle of wine. I've been eating chocolate for 3 days and am nearly sick of looking at it, but there's plenty left and I'll probably keep dipping into the basket.

We have such a beautiful day that I couldn't leave the easter eggs in the car for fear they'd melt, and spent some time this morning in the garden. I've got the front garden looking nice at the moment and need to keep it looking that way. We have a lovely new greenhouse out the back that my friend built, and even the back yard is looking lovely and green. During the summer months with water restrictions it was a dustbowl, but there's nothing like rain to green it up.

I read this morning that 16 people are dead on the roads this long weekend and my heart goes out to the families of these people. It's always the same during the holidays. People in a rush to get somewhere for a few days, and they don't get there at all. It's a terrible waste of life. Emily and Kai drove up to Sydney for the weekend on Friday morning and I'll be anxious until I hear they're safely home.

In other news I read how a cab driver stopped to help the driver of a crashed car that was in flames, only to return to his cab and realise someone had stolen his night's takings while he was saving someone else's life. What the hell is the world coming to? The good and the bad in one sentence!

We've had a spate of vandalism and thefts in Junee lately too that prove that more people are going bad. The library and chemist were broken into last weekend, the Medical Centre had the outside toilets vandalised, and last night the toilets at the park were vandalised. Maybe it's time we brought back neighbourhood watch, and get a few people out doing late-night walks with the power to nab these, and maybe a bit of a touch-up while they're at it. Junee is a lovely town and going the way of every small town with drunken louts and drug addicts robbing and vandalising. A pregnant woman was mugged only the other day in broad daylight! We need to get these arseholes off the streets and out of our beautiful town. I moved here eight years ago because you could still go out and leave you back door open. These days I go to work and I lock my back door.

The Easter Long Weekend is coming up fast and we'll have two 4-day weeks. Of course, it's my turn to do the business paper at work and I know about Wednesday next week I'll be on high alert. It's always the same, but this time there's the added stress of delivering it by Friday 13th. I have an ominous feeling about it (ha ha).

Alex's school held their annual Easter Hat Parade this afternoon and I didn't take lunch so I could go. It's only over the road which is handy. I watch all the kids parade around in their hats. You can tell the kids who's mother's helped to make the hats, they're so cool. It's usually kindergarten and 1st grade kids with the best hats: after 7 years it gets hard to think of something new. this year Alex made his own hat, and although he didn't win a prize, he got 2nd place in the decorated egg competition. He made a skate park (naturally), and had lots of boiled eggs as spectators, and a couple on skate-boards.

We were lucky enough this year to get a prize in the Monster Egg Raffle as well, so we came home with two lots of Easter eggs. Alex won a rabbit and 2 eggs wrapped in cellophane for his 2nd prize, and we got a big basket of eggs in the raffle. By Monday, I'm sure, everyone will be sick to death of chocolate. Zeke is funny with chocolate, he loves it, but Lauren doesn't let him have too much. It will be interesting on Sunday when he'll have so many to choose from.

I'm looking forward to a 4-day long weekend. No sport, no work, and with a bit of luck (if Carly wants any money), no housework to do. Alex turns 12 on Thursday and he wants me to get off work early so I can take him shopping, then out for tea in Wagga. I'm not sure yet that I'll be able to do that, but I'm hopeful. I bought him a petrol/nitro remote-control car that he can't wait to get. It's coming from China and I was worried it wouldn't get here before the weekend, but there was a card in the mail today saying I'd missed the courier, so maybe tomorrow they can deliver it to me at work. I just have to remember to ring them in the morning. The other half of his present is coming in the post too and fingers crossed it will get here before Thursday too.

As usual, life's hectic, and I guess I wouldn't have it any other way. It's all good.

It's been one of those weeks where nothing seems to go right. My sewing machine sat with the tension bit all pulled apart for 2 days while I figured out how it went together so I didn't get my "one cover a night" done. I have a friend that was bringing around another sewing machine on Wednesday, which he forgot about. It arrived yesterday and so for the last two nights I've been back at it. Three down, still two to go though! This is a picture of the corner chair I covered tonight. There's no cushions on it, it's just the base, and all together it will look great.

Work has been flat-out this week and I've had lists of things to do, but not getting very far with them either. Something "urgent" always seems to come up that pushes the rest of the to-dos down the list. This afternoon was a nightmare. I was trying to get a few jobs out of the way, but managed to stuff things up so I had to re-do some things two and three times. By 5 o'clock I was so looking forward to getting out of there.

We had a couple of 2-hour lesson-type meetings that also cut into my work time. A new electronic system for purchase orders has been implemented and we had to learn how to do it, though I know it's going to take some time for everyone to get their heads around it. No more writing out a paper order and getting a signature. Now we have to know the supplier, the cost, and where to allocate it to. I'm not looking forward to the next time I need to purchase something. Just putting an ad in the paper requires the "purchase order process". Aaahg. Putting an ad in the paper always required a purchase order, but I'm going to need the instructions for the new system when next we advertise.

I'm writing a procedure at work for processing development applications. So far I have 5 pages of hand written notes, and it's not complete. My boss suggested that in the event I'm hit by a bus, somebody else needs to know all the steps involved! True enough, but I'd prefer to think of it like: in the event I win the lottery and suddenly decide to give up work.

My problems with this particular MT install and the switch to FastCGI are still plaguing me. I've added a line to the .htaccess in the MT folder that I hope will stop the errors I had when trying to post. On the rebuild, I got a 500 server error, and looking in the error log I found it was an incomplete header error. I'll know if it worked when I go to save this post.

Update: Adding this line worked!! No more rebuild problems.

I'm very tired tonight and an early night is on the menu. All weekend I sewed new covers for a five-piece modular lounge suite I gave to Lauren about 8 months ago. I bought a new lounge to get out of re-covering it, but ended up doing it anyway. I had a 30-metre roll of material here for the job, so Lauren and Zeke came over for the weekend while I cut and sewed.

By last night I had finished all the cushions and bolster pillows, and tonight I have finished the first slip-cover for the base. I'd take a photo but my camera is having a "Lens Error", and because it's less than a year old it's back to the shope for it.

All weekend my website has been broken, but I had to have my priorities right, and I feel like I've really achieved something with the lounge. If I can manage to do one slip-cover each night, the whole thing will be finished by next weekend when I'll go back over to Wagga. I got up at 5:30 am, a miracle for me, to do something about the site, and managed to get it all working again by 7:30. (My normal wake-up time.)

This lounge is similar to the one I'm re-doing, but it has sides on the two ends, with corner cushions. Great triangular things that were hard to do the ends on. There was a fair amount of hand-sewing too because I decided to do without zippers this time. This is the third time I've re-covered the lounge in 14 years. Not a bad life-span for the lounge, and it looks like new again each time. The material is nice: black grey and gold squares and stripes. It'll look lovely in Lauren's back room and will be nice for when she has her baby in June.