What pours but isn't rain? Bad luck.

Been a bit of a funny week this. So far we've had the following go wrong:

• Tumble dryer belt broke when a bath mat got stuck and immobilised the drum - ordered new belt from the UK where it was bought.
  
• Dishwasher won't start - can't face it, not fixed yet.
  
• Air con in new car has packed up - under warranty but he can't look at it till next Thursday the day that Molly and Josh arrive from the UK.
  
• Battery in old car has packed up - so now we have to find another $150
  
• Laptop has crashed big time - Trojan virus it looks like. I was alerted by the fact that I was being asked to log into this blog...so it was a key logger... luckily I didn't access the bank on that computer!
  

However, on the plus side, last long weekend I set about removing the wheel bearings on the Ute, only to find that the way they built it requires some specialist tools and techniques. I ruminated on it for a while and decided that I was man enough to allow myself to be defeated by it. On the following Tuesday being the first day back at work, I took the half shafts to the same garage that had quoted me $1000 to do the bearings and the brakes. They said $260 to remove the old bearings and replace them with the new ones i'd bought. Knowing that I was unable to do the job myself..(it requires a 5 ton press and oxyacetylene) I handed them over with only a modicum of regret and remorse. The following day I got a call from the proprietor (Don) who asked 'er...did you say it's a 4WD?' I said 'Yes it is, V6 97....why?' to which he said 'Well, we've accidentally manged to weld the bearing lock to the shaft! and we're trying to find you another!'. Well needless to say, I was wiping my forehead with the back of my hand as I hung up, feeling very smug that I'd managed to rather uncharacteristically avoid dropping myself in the shit. The following day I went in and saw the mess they'd made of my old shaft... and felt vindicated that if they'd made such a lash up of it with the right equipment, how much less successful I'd have been with my (albeit very hot) plumbers blow lamp and a make shift puller.

This morning we were awoken by Matilda at 6am. We normally wake up around 7 ish, and have to prise her out of bed because she's been reading long past her bedtime. This morning she woke at 3am, 4am 5am, and finally got up at 5.30. The reason was that she'd got herself excited about the prospect of cooking us all breakfast! She was so excited that she couldn't sleep! Wow...she has SO much to learn eh! So, not wanting to be rude, we all dragged ourselves out of bed and were presented with a beautifully laid out table, with name places and a menu that she'd done up on the computer. We had hash browns...! That was it! Ha ha.... and after we'd eaten those, we were offered fried eggs! Not together... only after the hash browns. None of us were all that hungry really... so we put all the dirty plates in the sink (cos the dishwasher is broken if you remember) and went back to bed. I slept (downstairs in the guest bedroom which is quiet)... another thing I'm eternally grateful that I can do at a drop of a hat, whilst Matilda watched TV and Phoebe and Daile kept each other awake in our bed.

This evening, Daile handed Matilda (who was walking through the kitchen to the study) a roll of bin bags and said 'put this in the bin please' meaning tear one of these off and put it in the recently emptied kitchen bin... but Matilda was obviously unplugged cos she tossed the whole roll into the bin and kept walking! Probably because she was so tired! Never-the-less, she was awake and reading when I went in to check on her at 9.15 tonight! She reminds me of me.

It's exactly a week now until Josh and Molly arrive and we're all very excited about it. That's why we bought the new car (a 4WD Pajero - known as a 'Storm Trooper' in the UK I think... it's a Mitsubishi) Both the Ute and this car are very similar mechanically, and have similar miles on them. So we're planning on using this big car to go beach camping with the whole family whilst Josh is here and with most of it, when he's gone back, which he does at the end of Sept. I still have to build a roof rack for it. Normally when I go with one or both of the little girls, we fill the Ute tray with stuff, and we're not going to have that tray, but instead of 3 of us, they'll be 6!

On top of all this, which you'll realise is going to mean that we've got to clean the house, clear a space, move Phoebe into Matilda's room so the big kids can have a room each etc, I'm MAD busy at work and so is Daile! AND.. on top of that, I've got to build a stand for a trade show for the company I work for over this weekend!

Isn't it weird how this happens! It's an all or nothing kinda world eh!

Pen pals and the press...

Interesting link here to Mary Kate's local paper... http://www.pottsmerc.com/articles/2010/08/15/news/srv0000009062206.txt

Birthday Buoy...

Hello peeps! It was my birthday yesterday...

guess how old I am?

Er...*)£?



20?



Nope... i KNOW it's hard for you to believe, since I have the maturity of a Beaujolais but I'm...



...and I got lots of lovely things (apart from the balloons from Mum and Dad).
Here's a couple:
a nice 'farting' card from the Feeb...



some lovely socks from Mum...



and a cake with 50 candles... so I had to have some help from Tilda.



We went out for a really splendid meal at one of the local restaurants with the majority of the family and our neighbours Tracy and Rob. It was great!

So thanks a lot everyone...

'Appy Bothdee Mutha N Sis.

Today is the Mum's birthday, and she's *£"^&* years old...which is amazing really when you look at me! People think she must have been only in her teens when she started.

Interestingly, my sister is also *"^&* years old...which is even more amazing until you realise that she too is in that never-land that women go into where they don't tell people their age. Not that either of them really cares about that stuff.... not REALLY!

But anyway, I just wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to them both, and to say that I love 'em and that they are very dear to us all over at this end. We hope you're having a great day Mum, and that Gill, you'll be having a great day tomorrow!

Love ya

Good ol' plaster...

I've been doing another painting over the last few weeks, and struggled quite a bit with the tonal differences between one side of the face and the other. I've got to a point with it that I'm calling 'sort of done' but it's not really 'done', just postponed till I've got a better understanding of the problem and solution.

The painting is about 2ft square and now, with that one of Phoebe I put up here a while ago, another that I did of Daile months ago, I have a requirement for about 8 or 9 metres of frame. I like the big bold gold stuff, and I went down to the local framing outlet in the Hyperdome shopping centre to check out what they had. They had little pieces of frame velcro'd to the wall, and one of them was just about big enough, and markedly more so than most of the rest. I asked the (slightly curt) shop assistant how much it would cost for about 10 metres. He said that they don't sell the framimg material, they sell finished frames. OK I said, how much for a frame that's about 600mm square inside? He said about $425! I'd be looking at nearly a grand!

So I decided to make some. At first I figured I'd use the CNC router, but I don't actually have a 3D software package (that I know how to use) yet. I did download and play with Alibre recently on the recommend of my brother Nick, but I've already bought a package a few months ago that ought to have been perfect for it called 'BobCad'. I can't get my head around it at all. Not in the least bit intuitive in the way it works, unlike AutoCAD, which I taught myself in 2D without reading any books or even the help file.

So in the absence of that option, I fell back on a technique I learned when I was in my early 20's at art college. Plaster pulling.

You cut out a template of a sectional outline of the shape you're after, and build a jig around it to hold it perpendicular to the edge of your bench. Then you put a bit of clay under the build of the form, and some nails to stop the plaster form from sliding along the bench as the profile bites it, and off you go.

This is the resultant profile.





Next is to make a silicone jacket mould of it, then cut some strips of standard timber and embed that into the mould with urethane resin. Once I've got the mould, I'll be able to make any frame size up to about 48" square... for a few bucks really.

Happy Birthday Molly!

It was Molly's 19th birthday on Friday, and we managed to hook up with her whilst they're staying down in Falmouth at Megan and Robin's house.

She was telling us about her recent experience of working at the local pub, where she's been having a few issues with her occasional inability to track the right bill to the right table of diners. It's amusing to hear her describing the situation as she's running out into the carpark to catch the underpaying clientele before they drive off, and the ensuing dialog with the boss.

Hearing her describing how she felt about it, made us laugh, but more importantly, made us proud of her. I'm increasingly impressed with her humility and ability to laugh at herself, enviable talents that SO many people are seriously short on.

Good on you Molly! We could all learn a lot from the dignity and resiliant self respect that you hold to, and display so naturally. You're an enigma and you're all woman. We love you.