News update

Realised I hadn't posted much news, probably because there hasn't been a whole lot to report post Christmas, except for Josie joining us. It's the long school holidays here now. Ian's work closes down for a fortnight over Christmas so he took time off then while I was part of a skeleton crew at the library. We mainly just emptied the after hours returns bins for all the branches. Now it's my turn for a break and I'm off now until 28th January. Such a loooooong time to fill in.

I was up in Katoomba last Sunday with one of my bookgroups. We put in $5 each time we meet and spend it on a nice posh lunch each year. This year we went to Echoes. Here we are L-R standing: Heidi, Kaydee, Jenny (a new member, it was the first time we met her), Di, Wendy, Melanie, Denise and Vicki and, seated, Merilyn and Jeanne. It's always interesting and stimulating getting together with these women.

Ishbel is good and often has friends over who then invite her to their houses so she's occupied but the boys would rather just XBox or World of Warcraft the day away and then forget about calling friends to organise outings, etc. Jamie has a job but he's the paper boy on the train station at Springwood early in the morning 3 mornings a week. It means he's finished by 8am and still has the rest of the day to fill in. Rob was working for a pizza place in the evenings earlier this year but they suddenly closed and he was heavily into rugby and then he was going away to Japan in December so is only now starting to look around again. He has an appointment at the Blaxland McDonald's next Monday.

We haven't done much with the holidays yet. I chilled out for a couple of days at the beginning of last week then the weather got really really hot, too hot to go out and we just sweated and tried not to use the air conditioning too much. It cooled down over the weekend but we are looking to having temperatures of almost 40C mid week this week again. Yeuch!

The only good thing is that it might spark a bush fire. Our brigade is at the top of the list to go on the next 72 hour RRG. I'm not sure what RRG stands for but it means if there is a major bushfire out of our area and they need assistance we can be asked to send a crew. I've put my name down to go as we've been told it provides invaluable experience. It would mean being away from home for about 5 days - only 72 hours in the actual location with a day travel to and from. Karen has kindly agreed that I can drop Ishbel off with her if we get called out (we'll only get a couple of hours to get ourselves organised) and then Ian would need to arrange for her to go to Tanderra for a few days.

Meanwhile we'll just keep going to training. Both boys and I went yesterday morning. It was a huge turn out - too many for the truck and the PC and some of us had to walk in along the fire trail to a place called Wogo crossing where we were going to do pumping and drafting. I'd been there on a training session about 8-10 weeks ago and there was enough water in the creek there that we were able to draft water into the truck. Yesterday, even though I would have said we've had a fair bit rain in the intervening time, the creek at the crossing was bone dry. However, a little bit of bush bashing along the track and we found a waterhole and drafted water out of there instead.

We've had Josie up at the vet this morning for her stiches to be taken out (all RSPCA adoptees are de-sexed before you can take them home). The vet was lovely and spent a lot of time telling us - we went en masse; me, Rob, Jamie, Ishbel, Ishbel's friend Zanny and Bella - about the importance of socializing Josie well for when she is a big girl. It seems we got her just at the right time - puppies are most receptive to changes and learning before 4 months or so he said. He's going to arrange for us to get in to puppy pre-school even though we've missed a week of the current set of lessons and gave us lots of tips on what to do with her.

My washing machine has been out of action for over a week now. None of the repairers were available until last Monday morning because of Christmas and New Year. I got on to our usual repairer first thing on Monday and he said someone could come on Wednesday. That was much better than I'd expected, we usually have to wait a week, but then he found we were in extended warranty time and said I'd have to contact the extended warranty people who would then send him a fax and then he'd be in touch to arrange another time. So I had to wait until Tuesday afternoon for him to ring back by which time the earliest appointment I could get is this coming Wednesday.

Meanwhile I've had to farm out the washing. Karen came round for dinner one night and took a load back with her. She rang the next day to say not only had she put it through her washer but put it out on the line and dried it and folded it! Well, needless to say, with that service available, I took another couple of loads round!!!! I also took a load with me when I went to pick up Janet to go to Penrith with us one day last week. I'm now trying to hang out till Wednesday . . .

Ishbel had me take her shopping last week to spend her Christmas money on (another) build-a-bear. It was agony for her because we went down with Janet and Kate Addison and Kate also had Christmas money burning a hole in her wallet and took aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages to choose something in Myers. We did eventually make it to the Build-a-Bear shop though and Ishbel chose herself a panda which she has christened Cassie. Now perhaps the nagging can stop!