Quiet weekend

We had Sharon and Holly over for dinner on Friday night. Ishbel had been hanging out all week for tortillas so we had those and nachos, Yummmm.

Holly had wanted a driving lesson so Ian took her out after school. She'd been threatening to pay for lessons because Sharon kept shouting at her when she crunched the gears so we offered to take her out. Ian got her sorted and she went away happy.

Robbie went off on Friday evening to the snow for a weekend cross-country ski-ing with the Scouts.

HR postponed - until when, who knows, it's all dependent on the weather - too wet and too windy this weekend. So Jamie and I were out doing more trail cutting -exhausting. It's nice to walk back over your trail though and see what was achieved. Because sometimes several people go over the ground after you, you don't always get to see how it turns out.

Steve gave me a short bit of RFD training afterwards - doing stall recovery - what to do if you stall going up a hill. Our brigade PC is a Landrover Defender. To say we are less than impressed does little justice to the passions the vehicle elicits. Suffice to say it is universally described as "The Sh#tbox". I kept getting first and reverse mixed up and we called it a day.

Ishbel away for the night having a sleepover with Britany.

Had Steve, Bec, Hugh and Francoise over for dinner. Francoise has Meniere's Disease and needs to keep to a very low salt diet. She rang up to ask what I was planning to feed everyone and ended up offering to bring the main - spag bol. I love it when I invite people to dinner and they bring the meal!!! A lovely night which ended up with Steve, Ian and Hugh arguing about fire-fighting tactics.

Jamie and Ian up and out by 6:30am so here I am enjoying the peace of just the dishwasher and the washing machine drowning out the radio! Time for a cuppa and a read before they all come home.

Fingers crossed

Jamie and I have our names down for our brigade's HR tomorrow morning. Hoping the weather holds out for us - getting conditions right can be very tricky - it can't be too wet or too windy or too dry or too hot.

TGIF - Kissing frogs

This guy is 72 years old and loves to fish.

He was sitting in his boat the other day when he heard a little voice say, "Pick me up."

He looked around and couldn't see any one. He thought he was dreaming when he heard the voice say again, “Pick me up."

He looked in the water and there, floating in the water was a frog. The man said, "Are you talking to me?" The frog said, "Yes, I'm talking to you. Pick me up then, kiss me and I'll turn into the most beautiful woman you have ever seen. I'll make sure that all your friends are envious and jealous because I will be your bride!"

The man looked at the frog for a short time, reached over, picked it up carefully, and placed it in his front breast pocket.

Then the frog spoke again, "What, are you nuts? Didn't you hear what I said? I said kiss me, and I will be your beautiful bride."

He opened his pocket, looked at the frog and said, "Nah, at my age I'd rather have a talking frog."

Zits was apt this weekend

Awa' stick yer heid in a bucket

Poor Josie, she just can't take a trick at the moment.

I noticed she had a little weeping sore on her wound and Ian and Ishbel took her up to the vet yesterday. $200 later she has had an antibiotic injection, antibiotics to give orally and an Elizabethan collar/bucket.

As I left the house this morning she was crashing around and the collar had split! She had me pinned against the kitchen bench trying to get up close for a cuddle.

Poor baby!

Another big weekend

I note the last two weekend reports start "I should have posted this earlier but . . . " Let's see if I can do something different this weekend.

Haven't seen much of the family this weekend. I've been on a Rural Fire Driver course (Friday night, Saturday 12:30pm-11pm and Sunday 8am-5pm). It's so you can drive safely under lights and sirens and also teaches recovery for if you get a vehicle bogged and need to rescue it. The course, unfortunately, is heavily weighted in favour of those who drive the trucks which is not me yet. I'm there doing the 'light' component but spent a fair bit of the time in the back of a truck watching the boys having a go. That said, when I did get to drive the PC I got one-on-one attention. Today when we were out doing 'stall recovery' - how to recover yourself if you stall on a hill - I got to drive a Cat 7, one of the smaller trucks. I was then allowed to drive it back to the road. Woot woot.

In a month we do the second part of the course and the assessment. It is an overnighter with us going out west to Rydal.

Ian, Jamie and Ishbel meanwhile were heading out early on Saturday morning for Cronulla, all the way across town and south to the seaside where Jamie was playing his AFL match. It was the first time Jamie's team has played in a few weeks and unfortunately they lost. It must be nearly finals time, his season seems to be taking a long time, Robbie's soccer finished weeks ago.

Robbie was called in to work on Saturday afternoon and was still there when I came home. He's had a few shifts since the holidays where they've called him in at the last minute. I think he likes the money he earns.

Ishbel, having done the trip to Cronulla, was rewarded with a sleepover at Zanny's. She didn't come home until 6pm tonight and Zanny and Jeanne stayed for dinner - an Indian banquet which Ian had prepared for us. Yum!

Ian is recovering fairly well from his surgery - just getting his pin out on Wed - he was pretty sore for a day or so but I think it's better now. He's off work until Thursday at least; he has a GP appointment on Tuesday and an appointment with the hand specialist physio on Wednesday - he's just a bit concerned about how much flexibility he's going to have in his wrist.

TGIF - Lost in Translation

This is a true story from the Japanese Embassy in US!!!

A few days ago, Prime Minister Mori was given some Basic English conversation training before he visits Washington and meets president Barack Obama... The instructor told Prime Minister Mori, when you shake hand with President Obama, please say 'how r u'. Then Mr. Obama should say, 'I am fine, and you?' Now, you should say 'me too'. Afterwards we, translators, will do the work for you.' It looks quite simple, but the truth is... When Mori met Obama , he mistakenly said 'who r u?' (Instead of 'How r u?'.) Mr. Obama was a bit shocked but still managed to react with humor: 'Well, I'm Michelle's husband, ha-ha...' Then Mori replied 'me too, ha-ha.. .'. Then there was a long silence in the meeting room.

Ishbel's birthday party aka the best laid plans . . .

(Should have posted this last week but I've been really busy)

Up early on Saturday morning, head spinning with all the things I thought I had to do. At the supermarket for 8am when they opened. Whizzed round and all at the checkout by 8:20am. Not the usual couple of hours as I bump into people for a long chat and perhaps a diversion to the coffee shop.

Among the to-dos was to bake a birthday cake. Having never had any luck baking cakes from scratch in the old house, we are now used to buying packet cakes. One of the advantages is that Ishbel can now follow the instructions and make her own cakes. All went perfectly until the timer went to tell us the cake was done. Twenty mintues later and the cake was burnt - I'd opende the door of the oven but not switched it off!

Back to supermarket for another cake.

The invitations said, I'm sure, drop the kids off at our house at 2pm and we would be taking them down to the indoor climbing centre in Penrith.

Ishbel was telling the girls to arrive at 1:30pm. One of them did. The mother of the other rang us from the climbing centre at 1:30 asking where we were . . .

Had a lovely time at the climbing centre. "Best day of my life," was Ishbel's verdict.

Here's the slide show

Home for pizza and a movie. The pizzas stuck to the tin foil and we burnt (again) a couple of them. Someone spilt juice all over the table.

Head spinning with shrieking girls and Pink on the CD player.

Karen, Dan and a still bit poorly Xavier arrived.

Cake had its outing. I have a square tupperware type box for cakes. It came with an insert with handles that you can pull the cake out with but the handles have broken off so I tend to put cakes on the lid and use the bottom of the box as the lid.

Ishbel didn't know that and, as she took the cake through to the dining room, did't have hold of the bottom/lid of the box - result - chocolate icing all over her foot and the dining room carpet!

Xavier tried some climbing of his own up the stairs. Was doing two steps up, one step down, quite happily until he face-planted a stair and tears ensued. Karen tried to interest him in the stairs again but he wasn't having any of it.

By 9pm two of the three guests had gone home. Zanny was staying overnight. Girls pretty good, not too noisy and we headed off to bed. Read for a while and fell asleep with the light on. Just getting into some deep snoring when Ishbel arrived at my bedside - Zanny crying and wanting to go home - at 11:45pm. Tried ringing her mum but got no answer and she didn't think her dad would come all the way down from Lawson to fetch her. And I had no intention of driving her up there, aside from being dead beat, I'd had a wine or two during the evening. After much persuading the girls agreed to try and go to sleep. I went back to bed.

Where I tossed and turned for another couple of hours, expecting one of the girls to appear at the bedside asking to ring Zanny's mum again.

And then up early to go to RFS training.

I NEED SOME SLEEP.

Jamie's big week

Should have posted this earlier in the week but it's been frantic . . .

Jamie passed his driving test on Tuesday and is now on his P plates - red ones for 2 years (speed limited to 90Km/h) and then green Ps for 1 year (speed limited to 100Km/h)

TGIF ~ An Italian, a Scotsman and a Chinese man

An Italian, a Scotsman and a Chinese man, are hired at a Construction site.

The foreman points out a huge pile of sand.

He says to the Italian guy, “You're in charge of sweeping.”

To the Scotsman he says, “You're in charge of shovelling.”

And to the Chinese guy, “You're in charge of supplies.”

He then says, “Now, I have to leave for a little while. I expect you men to make a dent in that pile of sand.”
So when the foreman returns after being away for a couple of hours the pile of sand is untouched.

He asks the Italian, “Why didn't you sweep any of it?”

The Italian replies, “I no hava no broom. You saida to the Chinesea fella that he a wasa ina charge of supplies, but he hasa disappeared and I no coulda finda him nowhere.”

Then the foreman turns to the Scotsman and says “And you, I thought I told you to shovel this pile.”

The Scotsman replies, “Aye, that ye did laddie, boot ah could nae get meself a shoovel. Ye left th' Chinese gadgie in chairge of supplies, boot ah couldna fin' him neither.”

The foreman is really angry now. He storms off toward the pile of sand to look for the Chinese gent.

Just then, the Chinese man leaps out from behind the pile of sand and yells, “SUPPLIES!!!!"

The lost art of reading

There's an article in the LA Times from a few days ago about how the quicker pace of life makes making time out for reading more difficult to find. It's well worth reading in its entirety, but this part I particularly liked:

Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.

Sister Act

From the Nature & Health Newsletter Issue 14 August 2009:

She might have pulled your hair when you were little; however, Ulster University researchers say that having a sister increases your odds of having a happy life. Their study found that both men and women who had at least one sister scored significantly better on tests for optimism, achievement, and resilience. Why? Co-author Professor Tony Cassidy explains, "The presence of girls in a family is strongly linked to better communication, which is fundamental to health, while boys have the opposite effect."

I'm H-A-P-P-Y, I'm H-A-P-P-Y,

I know I am, I'm sure I am,

I'm H-A-P-P-Y

I came across this in the school newsletter

Australian Poem

Dusty red roads for mile after mile

Paddocks stretching far and wide

Stands of trees row after row

The golden sun burning the crisp brown dirt

The sun slipping under the horizon.

by Ishbel

Birthday

Out to dinner tonight.

A good weekend continued . . .

We had a lovely meal out with our grown up friends on Saturday night. In the end it was just Janet and Sharon that joined us, Steven had the 'flu (a cold) coming on and we left him at home doing the ironing!

On Sunday morning I picked Ishbel up from Zanny's sleepover party and she and I headed for Sharon's. Sharon had invited Ishbel to go up to Megalong Valley where Holly keeps her horse, Wilga. Holly is away on a school camp but Wilga still needed to be fed and brushed and so on. Ishbel jumped at the chance and those two headed off together.

Meanwhile I picked Catherine up on the side of the highway and she and I visited the Grower's Market at Blackheath before heading down into Megalong Valley to catch Ishbel and Sharon up. Somehow Catherine and I ended up shovelling horsey poo for the afternoon! Ishbel got all the fun stuff to do and quickly made herself scarce. We got 4 big bags of poo for Catherine to take home to her garden.

While we were there Sharon introduced us to Russell who was there with his 10 year old daughter, Savannah. Savannah has a pony, Dexter, and they were kind enough to offer to let Ishbel have a ride. So Russell took her down to a covered arena and gave Ishbel a 'proper' riding lesson for 20 minutes or so - little girl heaven.

See the Flickr slideshow of our day here.

On the way home we popped in on Catherine's friends Michelle and Ben and gave them a gift of a bag of horsey poo. (Michelle is on your crew at Faulco RFS, Karen). A traipse round their garden and a cup of tea later and we discovered I couldn't reverse out of their driveway!!! I rang my brigade Captain, Steve. I knew he would know what to do and he's got a monster 4WD of some sort (it's a brown one). Luckily he was home and was round within 10 minutes - in uniform!! I told him the uniform wasn't necessary - he'd been at a course all day - he said - I think he sleeps in it myself.

A good weekend so far

Lazy morning this morning then shopping with Ishbel who had a gift to choose for her friend Zanny who turns 9 the day before Ishbel. I have just dropped The Girl off at Zanny's for a birthday party and sleepover.

So Ian and I are going out with Janet, Steven and Sharon to the chinese restaurant at Wentworth Falls for an adults only dinner. Feeling very grown up!!!

Went to RFS training this afternoon. Only 3 of us turned up so we couldn't do the trail cutting I'd expected. So we ended up going down one of the fire trails for a drive in the Big Red Truck, did some map work and weather work and THEN I GOT A DRIVE OF THE BIG ED TRUCK. Whoooooooo hooooooo!

THEN, coming out of the track, we heard Winmalee responding to a smoke sighting on our patch. Got back to the station and we got sent out to assist. As it turned out the fire was down on the plains but we had a nice ride down another track!

Relaxing chez Colquhoun

Rob and the dogs just hanging out together

Josie relaxing - maybe she fell asleep reading . . .

Never darken our doors again

I had an appointment with Dr Jayamohan (Dr JJ) at the Cancer Care Centre yesterday afternoon and he has told me they don't need to see me again and, Dr Taper having said the same when I saw him earlier in the year, they have discharged me. Cured!

TGIF - Women who know their place

Barbara Walters, of 20/20, did a story on gender roles in Kabul, Afghanistan, several years before theAfghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked five paces behind their husbands.

She recently returned to Kabul and observed that women still walk behind their husbands. Despite the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban regime, the women now seem to, and are happy to, maintain the old custom.

Ms. Walters approached one of the Afghani women and asked, 'Why do you now seem happy with an old custom that you once tried so desperately to change?'

The woman looked Ms. Walters straight in the eyes, and without hesitation said, "Land Mines."

Moral of the story is (no matter what language you speak or where you go):

BEHIND EVERY MAN, THERE'S A SMART WOMAN!

Is nothing sacred?

Has this been getting a run in the UK?

Haggis invented 'by the English' not the Scots. The Daily Mail has a rant here.

Wikipedia, that new font of all knowledge has the Scottish poem Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, which is dated before 1520 refers to 'haggeis' - Thy fowll front had, and he that Bartilmo flaid; The gallowis gaipis eftir thy graceles gruntill, As thow wald for ane haggeis, hungry gled and I'm happy to go with that - Haggis in Wikipedia

Recovery

Josie had her operation yesterday. We dropped her off at he vet in Lawson about 8:30am and Ian and the boys went up about 4:30pm to bring her back home.

The vet says he found and removed a tiny little bit of ovarian tissue about the size of half a matchhead and that hopefully will be the end to the matter.

She just needs 24 hours quiet recovery so I am off work today and dagging about the house with Ishbel.

Ish and I had a late night last night, not getting back from Rock Eisteddfod until shortly before midnight. Another great night of dance spectacular. Springwood High School did marvellously but were rather overshadowed by Northmead High School who managed to get a jumbo jet on stage!!!

Another busy weekend

Usual morning of shopping, housework and AFL. Jamie's opposition forfeited the match this weekend but the team photos had been organised so he still had to go down to his home ground and he'd been warned that the Reserve grade might need players. Indeed he did end up playing with them (older people in their early 20s). Enjoyed the ramped up pace and even managed to score a goal. Chuffed at that. The Penrith team won - Jamie got the impression the Reserve grade hadn't won many games this year because they were stoked - it's what Jamie's team has come to expect.

Once they were back we took Jamie and Robbie's old beds round to a friends. She has recently separated from her partner and was moving into a new place with her children. Several hours and one false start later the beds (Ikea beds - to explain the several hours) were up and we gobbled up some pizza before home to bed.

Jamie and I were up early this morning and out to RFS training. I knew it would involve cutting trails for the upcoming hazard reductions (perhaps 15/16 August, Karen & Dan - although keep 15th free coz that's Ishbels birthday party day). Jamie only came because I said if he didn't make an appearance at the preparation he'd likely not be allowed on the HR.

In fact, we did not only do trail cutting - did a few training drills for the first hour and half or so, including marshalling vehicles. If I'd seen this video, I could have tried some of these moves!



Another big start to the week tomorrow - Josie is off to the vet to be de-sexed again. Here's hoping all gets properly done and we don't have to repeat a third time.

In the evening Ishbel and I are going with Janet to the Rock Eisteddfod. We've been for several years in a row now and always enjoy it.