The week after the last but one entry about the art gallery, we went into town again to meet up with Matilda's pen friend from Pennsylvania, Mary Kate (or MK as she's known) at the museum. This was a first meeting, and MK's mum and teacher had come over with her for a visit to the school. Matilda's teacher has set up a fairly full on relationship with MK's class, and their teacher Ms Fonte (fontay), and all the kids have been paired off with a contemporary in the States. Mr Manning (Tild's teach) has even taught the American class on a Skype link up on a couple of occasions.
As it turns out, the two girls got on like a house on fire. They're both pretty significant contributors to their respective classes, being enthusiastic learners and mentors to other kids their ages. The assembled adults (Mr Manning, Anne Marie (the mum) Ms Fonte, Daile and I) just sort of milled about, watching what they were up to, and playing with the Feeb. I felt a bit weird about this after a while, and wanted to go and have a cup of tea somewhere, but despite several pointed suggestions to do same, we all just hung around. Mr Manning and Ms Fonte in particular seemed really caught up in the interaction between their favoured pupils and so we had to forgo the tea. I'm afraid my tolerance for public spaces is not massively high. Nevertheless, it was very enjoyable, and we did eventually go to the library cafe, one of our favourite haunts as a family, and all 3 of the girls went to hang out in the very good bookshop that is adjacent to it.
In one of my earlier conversations with MK's mum, I ventured to ask her what she did for a job. I did actually consider asking her what her husband did for a job before I'd asked her what she did for a job, but something about her made me avoid that particular faux pas and I'm glad it did. She's the financial controller for Pfizer the drug company - responsible for Europe, A&NZ and Africa. She goes out more times than the gas... according to her daughter. Her husband is the primary carer, and he was at home with their other 3 kids. Sounds like a good set up. I told Daile that was what we should be doing! She gave me one of those grins that's not a grin... a kind of dream on kind of grin. That said, she IS planning on letting me retire at some point. She does come from a family that live to be a million years old, and she IS a full 7 years younger than I am, so she needs to get a decent job at some point before I'm too old to enjoy the fruits of her considerable intelligence. The wonderful thing about being a stay at home Dad when I finally get to be one, will be that there wont be any kids here! Ha ha. (Unless you count me that is!)
What else? Oh yeah... the day after the MK meet up, we went up to see a house that our builder is building up in a place called Pullenvale. This is an area in the North West of Brisbane that is about half an hour out of the centre (The CBD (Central Business District) as they call it here). The house the couple (Bart and Caroline) there are having him build is very similar to the one that he lives in called a 'Ballinger'. I'd actually been up to see the house on the previous Wednesday because I'd been practicing being a stay at home dad whilst Daile had to go to work. It's a fantastic looking house and the location is awesome. This couple bought the land when they had no kids 7 years ago. It's a 20 acre hillside forest plot, so they are totally surrounded by mature trees, and they paid the princely sum of 150 thousand dollars!!!! Aaaaargh! It's bloody beautiful and they paid the cost of fast car for it! Nowadays, the land is almost certainly worth something like 6 or 7 hundred thousand, so not a bad gain. Not that they're thinking of selling it... they now have 3 lovely children and a fantastic wooden house.
They're considering selling us their shed... which kinda spoils the look they reckon.
If you're interested, this is a link to one of their time lapse construction movies that they've posted on the web. (I was going to do this when we build too). Dad, this one has no sound, but you may want to turn the volume down a bit if you check out any of the other 'the haven' vids ... they seem to like techno-techno-technotronic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm22AqoMjik&feature=related
We've reconceive the roof line of our house and we're waiting for a re-price. Alan, the builder, is the one with the red blue and black shirt you can see about 51 seconds into the timelapse on the link.
On the following Monday, we had visitors from NZ. Adele, Bernie and Gina Lee from Christchurch (Sarf island), who are related to us in some way that non of us could figure out. Adele is Rene's daughter, and Rene is the daughter of someone that was my Nana's cousin... I think. Anyway, they like red wine, I like red wine, so no worries! They were actually really nice people and we got on very well. Adele is a tailor, so we had that interest in common, and Bernie is a mechanic, so we had that to avoid discussing...Ha ha. Bernie has been a mechanic for the same company for 40 years! I felt it was imperative NOT to discuss cars with him. We talked about everything but that... pretty much! They stayed Monday and Tuesday night, then went to stay in a tower on the Gold Coast while they submitted themselves to the purgatory of Sea World and the other 'World' that isn't 'Movie World' or 'Wet and Wild World' or something. They're all a pain in the nads if you ask me. They came back briefly on Saturday arvo on the way back to the airport. We took them for a walk, as if they weren't sick of that already, and Bernie and I stole the kids bikes and chased each other down the steepest part of the track... about 1 in 5.. with bumps! (Whilst we're on the subject of Nads!) The kids (except Matilda) were too chicken to go down it!
On Sunday, I was going to grease up my car, which has nipples at all the UJ's. There are four on the two part prop shaft, and two for each of the four drive shafts as well as an extra lot on the four wheel drive gear box. I've been putting this job off for nearly 2 months, and they're getting quite noisy. (I didn't clean off the truck after the girls and I went to Straddie last time and drove through the surf....my pressure washer hose had sprung a leak). The other thing I was going to do was tidy my workshop and do some more on the painting I'm doing of Matilda. I didn't do any of those things in the end, because I figured out how to make a cnc panel saw out of my router table, so I did that instead! Now I have a computer controlled rip saw! Taddar!
Lastly, I must tell you about the rather stirling effort that Matilda and Phoebe and Tara and Carly from down the road are making to thwart the development of a piece of land not far from where we live. They've made a petition up and the four of them have collected over a hundred signatures by going door to door locally to protest at the loss of habitat for the wildlife. Totally off their own bats. Power to the lasses... ! The school have been targeted too, and Matilda's teach is right behind her!
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