A Cool Damp Sunday!

Northern Queensland is currently receiving heaps of rain from what is left of Cyclone Olga. Areas to the north are in flood and more rain is expected. Now the place nearest us getting this rain is probably Mackay which is almost 1000 kilomteres north of us, about the same distance as between Melbourne and Sydney. The screen shot above left is from the weather radar about 600k's north, the screen shot centre below is of our current weather radar in Brisbane but covering us here in Caloundra.

The showery weather we are experiencing is from a different weather system altogether though heavier showers from the remnants of Cyclone Olga may get to us about Tuesday or Wednesday!


The photo to the left left shows the sky when I awoke to this morning. I reckon we had about 4 or 5 short sharp showers yesterday and overnight totalling 15mls (about 60points Texas Lou). The temp is hanging around 26 degrees, I have turned the fan off as I type.

It is drizzling.

I was busy again at the Computer Club yesterday helping people out. There were programs to install, things to explain, and general helping out with computer things.

I am doing a presentation at the Computer Club next Saturday on Media Players which allow people to view movies, photos and listen to music via their TV and or Audio Visual receiver. I will have to tread carefully as the media player is great for watching movies downloaded (illegally) from the internet. Illegal behaviour is certainly not condoned by the Sunshine Coast Computer Club.

Some Rain And Cooler Weather

About 4 pm Friday afternoon a storm rolled through our area and dropped about 10ml of rain. This morning the lawn already looks a little greener. Not only is the lawn a little greener, today will get to a more comfortable 29 degrees or so.

I was attending a Home Brew Association Meeting as the storm rolled in. The bike ride home was pretty wet I can tell you!

As a part of water restrictions here and having a pool, I am 'required' to have several water saving features installed. One of which is to install a rain water diverter which I did a few weeks ago. Yesterday was the first chance I had to test it. It worked very well.

The diverter is installed 'into' a downpipe (top left). As it rains the diverter fills up and water flows via a hose in to your pool. If there is no outgoing flow, the diverter overfills and the excess water continues down the downpipe. I drop the other end of the hose in to a pipe which is there in case we ever wanted to connect solar heating to the pool. Despite only having 10mls of rain, the pool is currently filled to the top. Usually we could expect a decent downpour every few days at this time of the year which means the diverter would help to keep the pool full and there wouldn't be a need to top it up from the mains. With so little rain this year, I have been using the mains to keep the pool topped up.

We have king tides here at the moment. In the right of photo you can see a buoy leaning right over indicating just how quickly the incoming tide was running. You will have to click on the picture for a larger view. Some people who live right on the beach are keeping their eye on high tide levels for the next few days.

The land in the background is a part of Bribie Island. It is expected that the sea will break through this spit of land in the future and eventually all the land you now see will be underwater. It is also expected this area will be a possible future surf beach once the spit of land goes!

Computer Club this morning so I had better head off and get ready!

It's Thursday

Trish and I spent Australia Day (Tuesday) with a BBQ at Tony and Angela's home. Other guests included Paul and Linda, Tony's daughter Michelle and partner (just moving up from South Australia) and Tony's sister and husband. It was a warm afternoon so it was great to be outside. Tony cooked up roast lamb on the BBQ and the meal was finished off with Pavlova. It was great, lots of laughs, a few beers and great company. We eventually arrived back home just on dark and then watched the end of the cricket, Australia vs Pakistan on TV. I slept quite soundly Tuesday night.

Thanks to Tony's Facebook page for the photos!

Wednesday was again a hot day so we locked the house up, drew down the blinds and eventually turned on the air-conditioner late in the afternoon. The pool was a great spot too. We both had a swim about 10:30 pm to cool off before going to bed. The pool water temp was about 30 degrees so the late night swim was just awesome!

Kids returned to school here yesterday too. It was a hot one for their first day back for 2010.

It is expected to be 33 here again today. Though this isn't hot by most standards, when you put it with 65% humidity it certainly makes it seem warmer than your everyday 33 degrees. "Isolated Storms" is the forecast for this afternoon which means we will probably miss out. The forecast is the same for tomorrow Friday but we will be more likely to get something then. On Saturday we have a cooler day with showers forecast. These showers are then expected to continue for a few days. Hopefully we will get some good well deserved falls out of it all.


Trish went to Stitchers yesterday morning and we both checked out the Chiropractor in the afternoon. Kathryn, the 'mistress of manipulation" certainly makes me feel a lot better after a visit. My hearing aid is in for a service right now too so I am not performing quite at my 100%! This didn't stop me putting a brew on yesterday morning.

Recently our youngest daughter Kim returned from a a trip to visit friends in Thailand. A package arrived this morning with a Thai beer T-Shirt for me and a lovely 'Wrap' for Trish.

Trish is working at the Information Centre this morning. I am have an "Internet Surfing Day" with tennis on TV and the pool on the agenda for this afternoon!

Things have worked perfectly with the change over of my modem/router, The Billion 7401-VGPM hasn't missed a beat!

Still Nice And Warm

The local weather bureau is suggesting the hot dry spell we have been having should begin to break up later in the week. They are even suggesting we will get some rain come next weekend. The front lawn could do with a couple of inches of rain, it has dried out again.

Not a lot of news. All incoming phone calls to us come via the Telstra service while our outgoing calls are all made with VoIP, that is via the computer. We use the same handsets to make calls as we do to receive them. However the VoIP service isn't perfect and every few days we have had to reset the DLink modem/router to get everything back running again.

I have a couple of VoIP enabled modem/routers, my DLink and a second one made by Billion. The Billion is certainly more difficult to set up than the DLink. The DLink has a wizard, you just type in the basic information and your router is then setup for you. The Billion requires most settings being entered manually and this can be a bit of a hassle. There is a 100 page User Manual available online for the Billion and this is a must have. I guess the setup wizard is what you get when you purchase the more upmarket model. The Billion was much less expensive to purchase than the DLink!

The DLink has not been behaving well with a modem/router reset required weekly so I have put the Billion back in to service. There has been a firmware upgrade for the Billion which fixes some of the problems it used to have especially with VoIP. So today I upgraded the firmware to the latest and reset all the settings and have put it back in to service.

Weather The Same, Hot And 31!

The weather forecast is getting to be monotonous, 31 degrees and sunny again today. We have not had a drop rain since we returned to the Sunshine Coast from our trip to Melbourne. The pool warms up to about 30 degrees during the day making for a sensational late night swim just before heading off to bed! Sometimes the sea breeze is a bit late coming in but it is always there cooling us off about 3 pm daily.

Trish is still a little off color, nothing to worry about, just not quite sparkling. She has gone to Gym again this morning!

I had Computer Club yesterday and had a very good day. I managed to get one member's laptop to connect to the Club's Wireless Internet where several others had failed to do so. It took a bit of searching but eventually we got it sorted. I was able to help the member who could not receive her Yahoo emails when I set up Thunderbird on her new Windows 7 laptop. She was most grateful. I was able to help several other club members too.

I rode my bike on my own today, the others don't/can't ride on Sundays. I passed one guy walking with his dog and then met him again on my return trip. Just after I originally passed him he came across a kangaroo on the pathway. It was over 6' tall and gave him quite a start! It hopped away in to the bush.

Plenty of cricket and tennis on TV at the moment.

Because of daylight saving in Melbourne and none here in Queensland, the powers that be with Channel 7 in Brisbane decide to give us a 'delayed' coverage of night time matches. Therefore we tend to follow these matches on the internet with 'live' scores and watch live video on the computer. Here is a screen shot of how live tennis looks via the internet. You can visit there site for yourself here.

Friday's News

Temperatures here remain in the low 30's with a cooling sea breeze most afternoons. The hottest part of the day is usually late morning before the sea breeze rolls in.

The 'gecko' from the front of the pool filter cover has been replaced by a green frog. We are looking at sorting out the fences around the pool in the backyard. The back fence has gaps up to 1cm between the palings and this offers little or no privacy with our neighbours over the back. I have decided to put another row of palings to cover up the gaps. The remainder of the fences will get a new covering of screening too. You can see some of the current screening I have used in the photo. Hopefully all will be completed early next week. The brush screening along the back fence has thinned out and looks pretty ordinary.

The big highlight for us has been to see the old English pop group from the 60's, "The Searchers". They performed at the new auditorium at the RSL Club. I booked tickets soon after bookings opened in December so we were right up the front. Tony, Angela, Paul and Linda joined us. As Tony said, the haven't lost "it" from the 60's, they were just fantastic. After the concert they come out to give autographs, sell CD's and be available for a chat or a photo. I am not sure but would you call the people in the back row of the photo "Groupies"?

The two guys on the right (above) are originals from the 60's pop group. John McNally (second from the right) is 68 but can sure play the lead guitar. He has a "Byrds" jangly guitar style and is a highly professional musician. I really enjoyed "Mr Tambourine Man". The guy second from the left is Spencer James who was lead singer with a one hit wonder group from the 70's called "First Class". Their one big hit was "Beach Baby". He can really hit the high notes and performed a sensational version of "The Rose". As you can see it was a fun night.
I am a little seedy this morning not helped by a 14 kilometre bike ride! Later today we have a "Home Brew Appreciation Society" meeting at Tony's. I have the cricket on TV again today as well!

Another Bottling Completed!

Tuesday was spent quietly around here! Trish did her half day at the Tourist Information Centre while I did another bottling of my latest brew. This time it is a Black Beer. It will be ready to drink in a couple of weeks. However the boxes containing the new brew are on the bottom of the pile and will take a month or so to get to the top and be consumed. This is just about the perfect time to be able to drink each brew.

Trish continues to enjoy her volunteer work at the Info Centre and loves meeting people from all over the world.

After bottling 32 bottles all the equipment has to be carefully washed and dried. Drying is easy on these warm days. Failure to dry the equipment fully can lead to mould growing in the fermenter!

I sorted out all my External Hard Disk Drive (HDD) backing up. As my movie download collection grows, so too does my need for more storage and backup space. I have four external drives for storage. The silver ones seen on the left in the photo nearest the printer is the oldest and has only 160GB capacity. It now stores my "Downloaded Applications". These are computer programs I have collected over the years. The HDD beside it has 320GB capacity and stores all my Data stuff, mostly data contained in "My Documents". And the third drive to the right of the monitor is 750GB drive and is where I store my downloaded movies, TV Shows etc.

The 750 GB drive has a power switch at the back of it which doesn't always work. I am sure that one day I won't get the thing to power up at all. So I have a 4th 1TB HDD which backs up everything! This the drive I take when I head down to Melbourne or around to someone's place to do some file swapping.

I do have a 5th External Hard Disk Drive which is a 500GB USB powered drive I attach to the Media Player in the lounge room. It has most of my movies as well as much of my Music Collection on it. Being USB powered, it does not require a power supply to plug in to a socket to get it to go. The HDD is the smaller black box in the photo. It connects to the TV as well as the Audio Visual Receiver which in turn connects to my Surround Sound Speaker system.

Trish often laughs at all my external HDD's!

Another comfortably warm day today getting in to the low 30's. The pool will be the place to be later today. Our daughter Kim has passed another exam, she wasn't too confident on this one but she seems to have done well with it.

Monday Was A Stinker!

Yesterday (Monday) saw our part of the world get to 35 degrees with quite a bit of humidity! The wind blew constantly from the north west making being outside like in a furnace. Usually we get a sea breeze in the afternoon but not yesterday!

The air conditioner went on at midday and stayed on! We sat back quietly and watched the cricket on TV. When the cricket finished early we watched some tennis (Australian Open) from Melbourne where it was cold and wet!

I eventually got into the pool about 4 pm and stayed there for a good 30 minutes. At 8 pm it was still about 28 degrees. The same cool change which had hit Melbourne eventually found its way up here and this morning it was down to 16! Today will be low 30's again and sunny but we should get the sea breeze this afternoon.

On Sunday we again had Paul, Linda, Tony and Angela around. The pool was a popular spot again. It was heaps of fun, we were celebrating Linda's resignation from her job!

Meanwhile in Melbourne grand children Charli and James were a flower girl and he a page boy for a friend's wedding. They look pretty dapper don't they!

The computer club on Saturday morning was just flat out for me too. There were people wanting to know about Facebook, another wanted to be able to receive her emails on her new Windows 7 laptop while others wanted to know how to remove programs etc. It was so busy I hardly had time for a chat!

Today will be a day for bottling my latest brew. Then I have to sort out my computer backup to external drives. I have rearranged a few things with the computer so I need to finish that off. Trish is off to do some work at the Tourist Information Centre this morning!

Last night we watched the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was quite enjoyable but more like Raiders Of The Lost Ark with Harrison Ford than any Sherlock Holmes I remember! But it was fun to watch! It is worth having a look at!

My computer continues to run very well. I guess the RAM problem had been simmering there for some time and may have been causing a few hiccups for me.

The shoulder I hurt while digging for the new concrete is 95% better now too.

Big Computer Back From Repair!

No it wasn't the power supply causing my problems, it was RAM becoming loose in a slot which caused them. When computer RAM becomes loose, sometimes the connections are OK, then the next time there is poor connection. Therefore it would start sometimes and at other times it wouldn't.

From what some of the repair guys say at the Computer Club, this can be a common problem. One repair guy carries some spare ram with him when he does a computer repair job and the first thing he does is swap his good ram for the current ram and see if that solves the problem.

The repair guy at the shop we took it to (and where I bought the PC) did say to Trish that my computer was now well over two years old and was probably up for upgrade some time in the near future. I was planning to upgrade it later this year! And just to show that it is working OK, the screen shot (left) was just taken and shows how the screen looked while I wrote this post!

We have another fine day and low 30's again! Yesterday afternoon Tony came round for a 'meeting'. We went over updating web pages then later we all met at Bulcock Beach in Caloundra for a walk through the "Friday Market".

Yesterday was a bottle washing day so now everything is "go" for bottling in the next day or so. The photo shows the bottles sitting filled with water and some bleach to ensure they are clean. This is a warm job in the current weather! The pool was a great spot afterwards. And yesterday I always have the cricket to watch on TV too.

Last night we watched the recent George Clooney movie "Up In The Air" which is being suggested for this year's Academy Awards. Though an enjoyable film it did not seem to be anywhere as near as good as 2009's nominated movies!

Today I have Computer Club and then more watching cricket on TV. Needless to say the pool will be a popular spot too.

I have updated our possible travel dates for 2010 in the bottom right hand corner of this blog site. You will need to scroll right down to the foot of the page to find these dates.

Big Computer In For Repair!

When I said I thought I had 'fixed' my computer I was wrong. The problem came back late yesterday and I now have been unable to start it at all. It usually makes a "Beep" sound when it first starts up but when I try to start it now it looks like it is trying to start but it goes nowhere. It has an Asus Motherboard so I did a search for "Asus beep startup" in Google. It seems if there is no beep there is a power problem and the main cause is most likely the PC Power Pack. It went back to the repair shop this morning and the Tech there agreed that was most likely the fault. It is still under warranty and hopefully I can get it back later today or at worst, tomorrow before lunch! I am doing this post on Trish's laptop!

We did a 15K bike ride this morning along a track we haven't all been on before. We were all quite hot and bothered when we finished. This is the view as we crossed over the main road in to Caloundra off the bruce Highway.

With things getting so hectic before and after Christmas this year Trish did not send out any Christmas cards. So we haven't forgotten people, just lost track of time and then it became too late! Christmas and New Year's Greetings to all our dear friends!

Last night's Thai meal was great. It was a super night but we all belived we ordered too much food. We will know better next time.

Another lovely warm day today, low 30's and hardly a cloud in the sky. The Test Cricket is on TV all day so I will sneak a swim in during breaks in play!

A Lovely Sunny Warm Wednesday

We can at last say we have recovered from our recent trip to Melbourne. It took a couple of night's rest and some quiet times but both Trish and myself are feeling much improved.

I am back to the daily bike ride and Trish has now been to the Gym a couple of times. Yesterday afternoon it was time to put another brew on so that filled in an hour or so. The weather continues summery so the pool was a popular spot for both of us. I think I was in the pool four or five times during the day.

Today Trish is catching up with a friend for coffee then doing some shopping. I have had a bit of Computer trouble but that 'appears' to be OK now.

The computer wouldn't start, the disk drive activity light would run for 10 seconds and then stop! I turned it off for an hour and pulled the electricity plug out. This ensured any residual memory left from the push button shutdown after it froze was eliminated. After sitting for an hour I plugged the cord back in and it started OK. It again froze after a couple of minutes. This seemed to indicate a problem with one of the startup features I have running and in this case I think it was a weather update utility.

I quick System Restore from "Safe Mode" put the PC back to where it was 36 hours ago! A message came up saying there was a problem with the weather utility, I uninstalled the utility, then downloaded the latest version and reinstalled it. All now seems OK!

When in Melbourne we were given a Convection Oven to try. Using a conventional oven here in summer heats things up too much so this was seen as a cooler alternative. The oven did not have any instructions with it and being a 'cheapie' there wasn't a company download site from where we could get a copy. After some internet searching a site was found with some information. The roast chicken Trish cooked in it was great and there wasn't a huge amount of heat generated from it when cooking!

Tonight we are going Thai again with Paul, Linda, Tony and Angela.

Pleasant Here While Victoria Swelters

Melbourne is expecting a roasting 44 degrees today with strong northerly winds. Here we are looking at about 30 but with humidity around 60%. Pool side could be the place to be!

We had Tony, Paul and wives around yesterday afternoon for belated Christmas and New Year drinks. They arrived about 3 pm.

The pool was a very popular spot and the company was great. We had lots to laugh about, lots to drink (we are all home brewers) and nibbles.

We have been offered a 7 night Accommodation package at a resort in Hervey Bay. John Logan's family has so far been unable to use it so it has come down to us. It must be used before the end of this month so I am off to collect it this afternoon from John's mum who lives near us. Once I have the voucher in hand we can finalize exactly how we plan to use it.

Back To The Hot and Humid Weather.

Things are just about back under control again. Three weeks away from home and with over 6000k's done in the car it has taken us a couple of days to get things back to how they should be. To further complicate this we have arrived back in to the heat and humidity of mid summer. The temperature is around 30 degrees and the humidity is in the high 60's. Sitting quietly under a fan is just brilliant, but get outside to do anything and the perspiration just rolls off!

This morning I gave the car exterior a good wash and clean. 6000k's worth of bugs and road grime made it a slow a meticulous job. I had to use polish to remove some of the bug remains and I am sure I have probably missed some. The sweat just rolled off me even though it was morning!

Trish received this lovely 'wall hanging' lizard from friends Barry and Lorraine for Christmas. It now has pride of place under the patio and replaces a similar wall hanging we previously had there. If you look closely at the pool photo below you will see the 'old' lizard's new home on the front of the pool filter cover!

Then the garden pots needed watering and the pool required a quick vacuum. From there it was into the pool for a cooling swim and a laze just to catch up. So by 9 am all the day's jobs had been done. Tony, Paul and wives are popping around this afternoon for a swim and a couple of belated Christmas and New Year drinks.

Home After A Hectic Time

We are now home again and sorting out things around the house after being away for three weeks. The lawn has been mown and Trish gave the house a quick vacuum too.

Meanwhile earlier in the week in Canberra my sister Judy and her other half Peter arrived Tuesday afternoon. We hadn't seen each other for some time so we had some catching up to do. Then Trish and I went to Canberra airport to collect my brother's wife Jeanette who had flown up from Melbourne. We were all in the same motel so catching up and enjoying a few drinks was easy to do. We walked to a local Chinese and enjoyed a meal.

The funeral for my uncle was on Wednesday and we made sure we were there in time. The service (where I gave a eulogy) was fairly short and was followed by a burial. From there it was too a local club for refreshments. Peter and I made sure we didn't over indulge, actually we were still a little seedy from the night before! I caught up with some relations and my cousins.

From there it was back to the motel for more drinks and chatting! It was great to catch up but it is disappointing when it takes a funeral to get us all together like this. It was really good fun.

Dinner was some more take away food in the motel room. The girls had a great Wednesday night while the guys hit their respective beds a little earlier.

Trish and I were on the road for the 1400k drive back home early Thursday morning. The part of Australia we were to drive through had enjoyed heavy recent rains. The countryside was lovely and green, looking more like it was spring rather than mid summer. Usually the paddocks would be yellow with dry grass at this time of year but as you can see it was lovely and green.

We spent the night at Moree and then drove on to Caloundra the next day arriving home about 12:30 local time.

Tony, a friend of mine here on the estate, had kept an eye on things while we were away so the place looked great when we arrived home. Tony had even cleaned the pool for me so I could enjoy a swim. Thanks Tony!

In Canberra

I do have Wi Fi connection here at our motel in Belconnen in Canberra so I can continue with my blogging!

The Sat Nav got us safely to our motel in Canberra from Newcastle. The freeway around Sydney made for a very easy trip through what is usually a bit of a nightmare. Traffic (and red traffic lights) slowed us once we hit Canberra which is about 400ks south of Newcastle. A message from one of our Newcastle hosts Mick suggested I check my oil as a he found a large pool of oil under where the car had been parked. My car oil level is still above "full" so the dropped oil was most probably from the idiot who spilled oil over the engine when doing the servicing before back in mid December.

Our motel is old but very well situated near a small but adequate shopping centre. The shopping centre has a supermarket, eateries and a 'grog store'. Last night we had Malaysian food. It was OK but nothing to write home about. There was heaps of it and the cost was very cheap. I think the motel room light was off and we were asleep by 9pm.

We spent an hour or two on Monday afternoon visiting my Aunt. She had stayed by my uncle's bedside for his last 36 hours. She is in her mid 80's and is coping as well as can be expected.

Many other relatives will arrive this afternoon and some are staying at this motel.

I have a little speech fine tuning today and I will also keep an eye on the cricket on TV.

The weather here is fine with 31 expected today. It was 16 this morning in Canberra. This is a bitterly cold place in winter and can be stiflingly hot in summer!

It Is Monday

We are hoping to arrive back in Canberra today soon after lunchtime. How lucky we have been to have good friends in Newcastle who have put up with us for the last 5 nights. Mick and Janet's hospitality has been great. I now have Mick set up with 300 movies, a WD TV HD Media Player and another way in place to use his TV and Stereo Receiver. Mick seems to love it too.

Tomorrow Tuesday we will spend some of the day in funeral preparation. I have prepared a piece to say at the funeral and will run its contents passed the Lola and the celebrant during a meeting that afternoon. My sister and sister in law arrive in Canberra tomorrow too and we are all staying together at the same motel.

Whenever possible I hope to catch a look at the cricket Test Match going on this week on TV.

When we arrive in Canberra early afternoon today (guided by my new Garmin SatNav unit) we will catch up with Lola. The destinations are already keyed in to the Garmin!

The funeral is due for Wednesday 11:30 am and we will depart for home on Thursday morning via an inland route. We may stay overnight Thursday in Moree (about 800 k's away from Canberra) and therefore should be home about early afternoon Friday.

Tony, this will save me an email to you mate, I will try and call during our 'free' hours. It seems we have had some rain at home, at least a couple of inches so hopefully my lawn has recovered a bit.

I may noy have email contact from our motel room in Canberra but there is a wireless hotspot available in the motel lounge.

Thanks For The Gift Vouchers

It seems I am pretty easy to buy a Christmas gift for, if in doubt give me a JB Hi Fi Voucher. (JB Hi Fi is an electrical chain store here in Australia). Altogether I received $100 worth of vouchers.

After experiencing some traffic hassles on our trips recently Trish and I decided on a satellite navigation unit for the car. Our friends here in Newcastle have had one for some years now and just swear by it. They loaned it to us to safely find our way recently and it was great. They paid almost $1000 for theirs sometime ago, a similar model was on special at JB for $167 so I snaffled one at that price.

So thankyou to everyone who gave a JB Hi Fi voucher, I am the owner of a new Satellite Navigation unit for the car! We will put it to the test when we drive back through Sydney on Monday as we head back to Canberra for my Uncle's funeral. My sister Judy and her partner Peter are staying at the motel with us along with Jeanette, my sister in law.

One Funeral, Now A Second One.

The funeral for Trish's brother Bevan was a small affair attended by less than 16 people. Three of Bevan's siblings attended with all three travelling from interstate. Trish and I drove from our friend's home in Newcastle to the airport where we collected Bevan's younger brother Bill and then drove into Nelson Bay for the service. Nelson Bay is a beautiful spot very popular with holiday makers, especially at this time of the year. It was crowded with holiday makers. The family members chatted and remembered their brother at the RSL Club following the service.

We dropped Trish's brother at the airport and made our way back to Newcastle. From there on the phone ran hot with to-ing and fro-ing in preparation for my Uncle's funeral back in Canberra. It is to be held on Wednesday in Canberra at 11:30. I have been asked to give the Eulogy. Therefore we will need to be in Canberra carrying out some preparation well before Wednesday.

My sister Judy and Peter will bring the caravan up from Omeo while my brother's wife Jeanette will fly to Canberra on Tuesday afternoon and stay with us a in a Hotel/Motel near the funeral chapel. At this stage we are booked in to the motel for Tuesday and Wednesday nights. However it may be an idea for us to head to Canberra even earlier so I can prepare adequately.

Our New Year's Eve was spent quietly with friends Janet and Mick and some of their neighbours. Michael slept better than the previous night!

If all goes to plan, we should get back home to Caloundra on Friday.