The Collins'

I'm having trouble with this post. There is supposed to be a picture of the Collins' sitting here, but as you can see, there's not!!!

Grant and Gillian and their three kids came round for dinner tonight. They're down from Perth for a week's holiday so I invited them over for a BBQ. The weather has been wet and cold, with intermittent spells of warmth and sunshine! so it wasn't ideal BBQ weather, and with the patio still crowded with the stuff that will one day end up in the shed, or a garage sale, we retreated indoors to eat. The boys were full of energy and exuberance, while the baby laughed, and cried, and laughed again. I cuddled her for a while which may have had something to do with it. The boys were settled in front of the e-babysitter watching Surf's Up while the adults chatted in the front room and talked about the merits and benefits of seachanges and vasectomies.

Grant used to be a chaplain but now works for a church in youth ministry and says it's going well. The timing of their visit was fortuitous, they're in town till Saturday, while we're going up to Perth on Friday for the footy, Fremantle V Geelong so we've arranged to stay at their place on Friday night in their absence. In exchange I gave Grant the key so he can come and watch the footy here on Friday night!

NB Sorry if the size of this picture slowed the downloading of the blog, the Gimp and Picasa were not cooperating tonight so I couldn't use the scaled version!

What picture!!!!!

Progress

I actually felt like I made progress in my camp preparations today. It's been a bit like swimming through treacle at times but today saw significant achievements in securing a camp site for night one, finalising the groups, briefing two lots of kids, at Newton Moore and Busselton, printing the task and score books, and recruiting the extra staff member I needed. I even managed to requisition most of the cheques we'll need to pay the accounts and allowances.

Needless to say there is still plenty to do but it felt like I got over the hump today and with 4 days to go should manage to be ready in time.

We have special guests at the Holt Press Hotel, Sally and Warren are here for the weekend, and Callum is with them to the delight of Sport Boy. We had a BBQ tea tonight and tomorrow hopefully we'll get to show them around a few of the sites.
Only the junk mail stands in the way of a pleasant weekend with old friends!

Friday Friends and Footy

Allan and Lorna, friends of the family for over 40 years, with whom I stayed last night. (And did my first lot of washing in a week and a half!) I picked up Mum and Walter's campervan which I'll use to get around Victoria for the next couple of weeks.
I wandered up and down Pakington St this afternoon looking for the Word Bookshop without success (turns out it was at the other end of Pakington St, and didn't have the book I was looking for, although they reserved a copy for me to pick up from their Melbourne store) but in the process of searching I found a fantastic Antiques and Collectables shop where I could easily have spent a lot more money than I did! I bought a Gary Ablett figurine, for me, and a Route 66 belt buckle, for Jordan whose blog name might become "Fashion Boy".
I resisted the temptation to buy this John Wayne statue but figured I'd post a picture here for the owner of Holtieshouse to check out just in case he wants to part with $50 to gain possession of it. (Let me know Pop) (it's about 15" high and is a bit chipped and damaged, as befits the Duke, a little worn and torn!)

I called in to visit my in-laws, Alan and Mary this afternoon. Alan's eyesight has degenerated dramatically in the last 6 months, though at 88 he's in pretty good shape. I asked him about his memories of following Geelong and he recounted players and games stretching all the way back to 1925 when he saw them win the Grand Final. He has the had the privilege of seeing the Cats win 6 Grand Finals in his life time! Although Geelong have won a premiership in my lifetime, in 1963, I was only 2 years old at the time and was oblivious to the event. As my readers will know, I'm hoping Geelong will break a 44 year drought to win the premiership this season and am devoting a chunk of my long service leave to the goal of seeing it happen. I recorded about an hour of Alan's reminiscences, not just of Geelong but of other teams and players and games over the last 80 years.

After going to the footy tonight to see the thriller between St Kilda and Adelaide which the Saints won by 2 points I'm now out in the far reaches of Melbourne at Doreen, staying with my old mate Gary. He's just gone to bed and I'm heading there shortly now that the Tour de France is over and the blog is up to date.

Letchy's parting gifts

Greg was a little jealous of our naturally occurring wildlife, ie. the possum in the patio and the frogs in the carport. He's been trying to entice and breed frogs at home in Ballajura with fancy ponds and ferneries while ours just show up and hang around. I like frogs but what worries me is their position on the food chain, the next link up are snakes and I don't particularly want them to come hanging around the carport! I offered this one to Letchy but having done research on the subject he informed me that frogs don't do too well out of their natural environment so moving this one from Busselton to Ballajura was not likely to succeed.

So, he had to settle for a painting. He had told me he liked this one so I gave it to him.

Reference Saga

Phil under the bonnet.

About a month ago my mate Phil asked me to write him a reference for a job he's applying for in Afghanistan. Because I've been pre-occupied with the camp I hadn't done it and he was getting a little anxious, based on the frequency and tone of his emails asking how I was going with it. It was a fill in the blanks/respond to the questions type of reference, not just the typical one page of attributes and qualities I'm used to providing for students etc. Finally yesterday I sat down to do the job. It took a few hours of thought and word-smithing spread over the day but I finished it by late afternoon. I proof-read it and printed out a copy then attached it to an email and sent it off into the cybersphere and ticked it off my list of things to do in the holidays. I was dismayed then to discover an email from Phil this morning saying it had not arrived, or rather, that the template had arrived but all my text was nowhere to be found! Hmm! That's a nuisance, I wonder what happened to it? No problem I thought, I saved a copy of it I'll send it again. Hmm! No I won't! It wasn't there!! Yes the template was there but no, the four pages of reference material were not! Not in any of the three versions I could find of it on the computer! Gone, vanished, disappeared, vamoosed, not to be found!!! Thank God I had printed out a copy of it because that is the only record that remains of the whole episode! I scanned it, and sent it off to Phil as Jpegs, 4 separate pages due to the size of the file and the slowness of my emails when I attach anything more than a paragraph of text! The good news is he appears to have received it, though how useful it will be as a series of jpegs comparred to a Word doc is anybody'e guess, but I was just rejoicing that I didn't have to type the whole thing again. (The typing isn't that big a deal, it's the thinking of all the stuff I said in the first place that would have taxed me.) On the up side, Phil is apparently quite taken with one of my new paintings, Silver Bark, and we have negotiated a deal where he gets the painting in exchange for making me some frames. The age of bartering is alive and well.



Phil and Julie's 2 kids, Pieta and Elijah