Creaks, cracks and stuff

When will the winter end? I don’t know why but this winter has seemed to drag on. Maybe it is because we have had quite a few weekends lately with unsettled weather and I have been keen to do something active outside like fishing, swimming, tennis, etc but didn’t want to gamble with the weather. Fortunately, the weather was really nice this past weekend and I had a surf on my wave ski.

On Saturday I started to work on fixing up some of the creaks in the upstairs master bedroom, which is directly over our guest rooms downstairs. I used the circular saw to increase the gap between 2 floor panels that I thought were rubbing and cut through a screw that I didn’t notice. Ended up with about 10 bits of tiny screw shrapnel embedded into my left hand fingers. Had to dig some bits out with a needle. Fortunately I had my protective glasses on. But unfortunately, the floor is still squeaking so I still have some more work to do.

Jasmine went to a friend’s 10-pin bowling birthday party on Saturday afternoon and James went along also to play with a mate who was the birthday girl’s brother. That night James’ mate had a sleep over at our house and Jasmine stayed over at her friend’s house.

On Sunday a mate of mine from work called and invited me to go surfing with him down at Rainbow Beach (Coolangatta). The padded seat on my surf ski had come off last time I used it so on the way down I dropped into Bunnings to get some contact glue. My wave ski was inside the car with the rear seat down. While applying the glue to the wave ski I shuffled it forward to get better access and managed to crack the car windscreen beyond repair in the process! Best quote so far is $185 to replace the windscreen. I still ventured down and had a surf. The water felt a little cool at first but I had no trouble staying in for a couple of hours. The waves a really good down there and you get a long ride before the wave closes out. I really enjoyed it. Had a go on my mate’s surfboard but getting up quickly into a standing position was too taxing on my back so I will stick to riding the wave ski.

Lani and I manage to watch a couple of DVDs on the weekend. ‘Crash’, which was OK but the racial tension throughout the movie made it frustrating to watch. We also watched ‘Saw 2’, which once again was somewhat gruesome in parts but quite a thrilling movie with some cool twists. The first scene is somewhat gruesome but the whole movie is not all that way. I recommend it.

Today, I worked from home because James had another really bad allergy reaction yesterday but with plenty of sleep/rest and Claratyne (anti-histamine) has been able to rapidly recover this time. Jasmine also had some allergies after playing with a dog on Sunday and acted it up to stay home today also. Jasmine is quite fortunate that she is generally quite healthy but craves some sickness attention from time to time. We dread that one of these days she will actually be quite sick and we won’t believe her.

Lani is still going along strong at Westpac but she doesn’t like the customer contact despite the fact that her managers have said she is good at customer service. She is hoping to get some back office work eventually. While working at the different branches and talking with other staff she has mentioned the kids and people have been shocked to hear that they are 9 and nearly 7 years old. Everyone seems to think she looks around 22 to 25 years old. I remember when we first got married someone reckoned she looked below the age of consent. She still carries on he youthful looks 14 years later.

DVDs, school and parking on the motorway

The weather over the past couple of weekends has been unsettled with some rain, which is good for the garden and our dam but haven’t ventured too much outdoors. I’ve been keen to go fishing but wind and rain can make life pretty lousy in an open boat on the water.

We watched a few DVDs this weekend. The best pick that comes with my personal recommendation is ‘Saw’. Bit of a thriller with some gruesome parts but had some interesting moral dilemmas and a message (albeit very twisted) that we should appreciate our lives and make the most of it. The other movies were forgetful and lame, ‘Flight Plan’ and ‘Prime’. For the young ones, Jazz would recommend ‘Voyage of the Unicorn’. The acting and special effects (if you can call them that) were Power Rangers quality. Some of the bad guys were pretty scary looking.

Jasmine recently received her school report and Lani went to the parent teacher interview. Her teacher said she is doing well academically and is very well behaved. For her efforts we took her out shopping and she bought herself some Barbie Mermaidia stuff (basically plastic rubbish that little girls love for a week or 2 if you are lucky).

James was awarded student of the week last week for producing a high standard of work and active participation in class.

Tonight my drive home that normally takes approximately 25 minutes took 2 hours 20 minutes. Unfortunately I didn’t hear the traffic report until I was well and truly stuck in the motorway car park that extended for around 10kms. Several cars had over heated and people were able to push them along, the traffic was moving so slowly. I even saw some guys returning from a nearby liquor store downing a few beers. Apparently, at 12:30pm there was a significant multi vehicle accident including 2 trucks and 6 cars. They cleared the road at around 5:30pm. Major accidents don’t occur too often on the motorway but when they do there is absolute chaos.

The Visitors...

We have had quite a few visitors over the past couple of weeks. Firstly, we enjoyed a visit from Matthew and Meredith who ventured up here on a road trip from Canberra. They stayed for nearly a week. During their visit Matt, Meredith, Jazz and I went fishing. We pumped up some nippers but they didn’t stir up much action other than Meredith getting bitten twice while handling them, so we resorted to strips of mackerel and things started to happen. Jasmine was the star of the day catching a flounder, whiting, bream and flathead without any help. She was even starting to give Matt and Mere some tips on how to catch fish. All the fish we caught were pretty much undersized so we threw them back. We didn’t have a camera with us and I wanted to get a photo of Jazz with her mighty 35cm flathead (legal catch), so I kept it alive in the bait tank, brought it home, took a couple of photos of Jasmine holding it then drove about 4 or 5km to the nearest river and released it. And yes, it we still quite alive and swam away. We also went on a really nice 4km rainforest walk with Matt and Mere at Springbrook. The trail took us past several waterfalls and there were some beautiful valley views out to the coast.

Bob arrived on Tuesday morning last week and looked after the kids for the second week of the school holidays. Bob was happy to soak in the sunshine and read several books while here. We did go to the beach on one day and there were probably 100 boats or so several hundred metres off the beach. At first I thought they must have been checking out a pod of whale or something but soon noticed that there was some jet boat ocean-racing event going on. The boats were so quick and there were several helicopters chasing them along the coast. We also saw some rubber dingy races just down the beach from us and they were exciting to watch as they punched through surf break and caught some serious air at times. We enjoyed having Bob stay, particularly the kids. They are hoping that he might visit again soon or in the next school holidays.

The last of our visitors were two guys in suits…the local missionaries. It was quite funny when they dropped in; for some reason I had only just thought to myself that it has been quite a while since we have had any missionaries knock on our door and no less than 30 seconds later the door bell rings. They came quite close to dinnertime which we thought was a little poor but Lani had cooked plenty of food so we invited them to stay for dinner. Funnily, Lani had cooked spring rolls and fried rice and they happened to be the Chinese-speaking missionaries for the Gold Coast area.

Yesterday James had his birthday (9yrs) and we had a birthday meal at home. He received some presents but mostly got cash to buy presents and start up his own bank account. Unfortunately, his allergies have been not too good for the past several days and today I came home from work early to pick him up from school and take him to the doctor. He is going to take some stronger medication for the rest of the week to clear him up, so his body can recover. I also spoke briefly with his teacher today for the mid-year parent-teacher interview and she said he was a wonderful student. It is just nice to know that James has settle in well and is making good progress both intellectually and emotionally.