Trish Starts "Work"

The weather the last couple of days has been a little milder as the wind shifts to come in across the sea from the east. This means humidity rises but we lose our brisk chilly mornings. We get a little more cloud and an occasional shower as well. It is still low 20's during the day and double figures overnight.

Trish began her "Census" work on Friday beginning to deliver her 400 Census forms. I started the day with a bike ride and finished it doing the floors.

Being a winter's weekend there is plenty of footy on TV and Kim was coming up to visit.

We picked her up from the Airport here around lunchtime Saturday. I had been to Computer Club and Trish had delivered more Census forms during the morning. It was great to have Kim here. We didn't do much, sat, had a few drinks, talked about her trip to India, about her new job and just a general chat. I watched my footy team have a great win on TV and Saturday night was more footy, more talking, some wonderful Garlic Prawns Trish made and a few drinks.

I had a bit of a 'turn' Saturday night which lasted a few seconds. I was fine right afterwards and continue to feel great Sunday morning.

A gorgeous Sunday morning, some great bacon and eggs and a quiet sit around and chat. The ladies enjoyed the morning sunshine.

Kim flies back to Melbourne around 7 pm tonight. Trish will recommence her Census Form delivery tomorrow too.

Old Age Sex

This one brought a smile to my face, hope it's not too risqué!

After his exam the doctor asked the elderly man: "You appear to be in good health. Do you have any medical concerns you would like to ask me?"

"In fact, I do," said the old man. "After my wife and I have sex I am usually cold and chilly, and then, after we have sex the second time, I am usually hot and sweaty."?

Later, after examining the elderly gentleman's wife, the doctor said: "Everything appears to be fine. Do you have any medical concerns you would like to discuss with me?"

She replied she had no questions or concerns.

The doctor then told her: "Your husband had an unusual concern.He claims he is usually cold and chilly after having sex with you the first time, and then hot and sweaty after the second time. Do you know why?"

"Oh that crazy old fart," she replied.

"That's because the first time is usually in August and the second time is the following January."

We Have Now Been To Moreton Island

I had a few more loose ends to tidy up for the Community Association on Tuesday and then we went into Caloundra during the afternoon. Luderick are on the run at the moment and for one of the very few times I saw actual 'buckets of fish'. They were bigger than plates size and reasonable eating.

It was a pleasant around the boardwalk area. Later that evening we ate at an Asian restaurant in Caloundra which had "Malaysian" in the name. The food quality was almost 'food court' standard for the couple of Malaysian menu items they had there. We won't rush back!

Wednesday saw us both up and about around 5:30 am for our trip to Moreton Island. Trish had bought the tickets on special and 'online' and the ferry would leave from the Port of Brisbane. Moreton Island is a large island off Brisbane. Very few people live there and it is best known for 4 wheel driving, camping and its Resorts. The trip to the island was almost 90 minutes. We arrived in plenty of time prior to departure. The ferry is called MiCat and is really a vehicular ferry carrying 4WD vehicles to and from the island. It takes walk on passengers as well. The photo here shows the ferry unloading vehicles onto the beach at Moreton Island.

As you can see from the photo the weather was sensational, early 20's and hardly any breeze. We were dropped off on the beach a couple of k's from the Tangalooma Resort with our supplied picnic lunch. This photo gives you an idea of how far we were from the resort. Click on the photos for a larger view. The place was called "The Wrecks' where a man made harbour had been created. It was a long and leisurely walk to the resort complex. We had around 5 hours until the ferry was due to take us back to Brisbane.

As you can see it was quite idyllic. We arrived at the resort area around 11 am and ate our picnic lunch, mainly to save us carrying it around. We were pleasantly surprised at our freebie meal.

Tangalooma Resort is the sort of place you would go to to relax and do little. There were 'water sports' (snorkeling, para-sailing) all designed to give tourists an experience and remove money from their wallets. There were 2 wheeled motorized stand up bike things, $55 for 30 minutes! There were limited places to buy food, a basic meal was priced around $20! A 15oz beer cost $6.

There were Japanese and Chinese tourists staying at the resort along with a large group of teenagers who were known as "American Ambassadors" on some sort of program.

At least we could sit and eat or drink under the shade and just watch the world go by!

There was several types of accommodation available and very pretty and in relaxing surroundings. These were hotel type rooms (photo left) but there were "Villas" as well.

We spotted a Real Estate Agency. There are 'private' homes around the Tangalooma area and some of these are for sale. Prices start around 1.25 million dollars! But you could by a cheaper Villa for around half a million!

We strolled around the resort complex and decided some of the areas were a little seedy and in need of upgrade. We found a small shop which would sell us litre of milk for almost $4. We had a stroll on the short jetty and took this photo of our ferry. It wasn't allowed to drop passengers off at Tangalooma as the resorts wanted to use their own boats to transfer passengers. However after dropping us off it sailed around to just south of the resort and did some minor maintenance work. As you can see the water is just perfect .. if a little cold.

The 5 hours were not easy to fill, we did a lot of sitting and looking.

Eventually it was back to the ferry for a 3:30 departure and we arrived back at our car on the mainland around 5 pm. We had previously eaten at "Sunnybank" some time ago, a suburb south of Brisbane and known as an Asian area. We travelled about 20 minutes south and ate there at a restaurant called "Malaya Corner". The Char Koay Teow, Salted Pepper Calamari and Lobak were just sensational, as good as any we had ever eaten! Despite paying $6 corkage for our bottle of $5 wine, the bill was less than $40 and the food was wonderful, especially the side serve of chilli!

It was around 8 pm when we finally turned into our drive way (and 120k's from Sunnybank)! It had been a long but pleasant day. We can now say we have been to Moreton Island, but we probably wouldn't go back there again just as a day trip!

Low 20's Again

Hardly a cloud in the sky, a gentle breeze and this afternoon's temp is going to be low 20's. Just glorious.

All the minor dramas with the Community Association have sorted themselves out overnight. Everything will work out perfectly.

A 12k+ bike ride this morning was a little on the nippy side. I have swapped the plastic box attached to the rear of the bike over the other day. This one is a little more substantial and comes with a lid which gives it a little more stability and strength.

The footy Sunday afternoon was good for both Trish and my footy teams.

We have booked (via Scoopon) a trip to Moreton Island on the Micat catamaran, 75 mins there and 75 minutes back including a 'picnic lunch' for $30 per head. Our trip departs from Port of Brisbane at 8:30 on Wednesday and we are due back around 4:30pm. It should be some fun!

Before The Footy Starts

Things are now almost back to normal. We have caught up with everything which needs doing after the recent visit by Kate and family.

I did a bottle wash this morning and will be able to do a bottling in the next day or so.

Most of my recent time has been taken up with the Community Association. It is Annual General Meeting time and I have decided to take on the president's role. I already look after the website and the Association's Newsletter. It is Newsletter time as well so I have had to finish it off and get it printed.

I picked up 1300 copies of it on Friday afternoon and dropped it off ready to be distributed across the area.

We are in the midst of getting nominations for the 2011/12 Management Committee. Eventually the nominations got to me from the Secretary ready to be put online. The problem I have found is 2 nominees are nominating themselves! It has always been my understanding that you can't nominate yourself at an AGM! I have checked out a source and they too believe that this is not possible.

It isn't too big a problem because nominations can also be taken from the floor at the AGM and that is what we will do. I want to make sure all is level and above board because of any possible future litigation. You don't want to leave yourself 'open' for any sort of legal recourse, especially as President of a Community Organisation!

I had an interesting situation at the Computer Club yesterday. One chap bought a second hand laptop which came with a newly installed version of Vista Ultimate. I have never seen a laptop before with this version of Vista on it! Anyway it won't update via Windows Update. I decided to download and install Service Pack 3 manually. We downloaded it and ran the update. An error message came up saying we had to uninstall the Chinese language packs before it would update. I couldn't uninstall the Chinese language at all.

It is possible the version of Vista is actually an illegal Chinese version with an English Language Pack installed. This will explain why it can't update (it is looking for the Chinese version of the Service Pack 3 update) and why I can't uninstall the Chinese Language Pack. It doesn't have a Language Pack, it is actually a Chinese version!

It is a lovely sunny day, the wind has dropped and it will be low 20's sometime during the afternoon.

At Last The Wind Is Easing!

Kate, Arj and family got away safely and on time on Tuesday night. Their flight was a 7:00 pm departure.

Wednesday was spent catching up on chores around the house with several loads of washing going through the machine!

My bike ride was more difficult than usual with very strong southerly winds buffeting the area. Not only were the winds strong, they were very cool as well. It struggled to get to 20 degrees but it was OK when you could get out of the wind. Needless to say the pool is full of rubbish.

I was hoping the kids would want the old PC but they decided against it. The deal was they had to get it home and this proved to be too difficult for them. It has now been 'put away', the monitor has gone back into its box and the office table top is looking a lot neater!

Click on the picture for a larger view, then click "Back" to return to this page.

I had bought a cheap Hi Def Set Top Box (STB) for Trish to use on 'her' TV. She didn't like it and still prefers to record her shows on her old VCR. I put the STB on the cheap CRT TV I have in the office. It works OK. It is the small black box you can see on top of the filing cabinet.

I have found a couple of good TV series available for download. These are US shows and don't get onto TV here. They both rank quite highly in the USA and have great reviews and scores. The titles are "Southland" and "Breaking Bad". The latter program is a little 'tongue in the cheek' and tells the story of a cancer suffering science teacher who decides to get into the drug business. His partner in crime is a former student who was a school drop out and has become quite a successful drug dealer. We have gone back to watch series 1 from the start. The current series in the US is series 4.

Another quite good TV series is called "Mad Men".

We are both enjoying all the TV series very much.

Two Extra Days

Here it is Tuesday afternoon and we are in the winding down phase of having the grand kids and Kate and Arj here with us.

They had considered going down to the Gold Coast and checking out a Theme Park for the day. This would have seen four hours in the car and over $300 out of pocket (inc food etc). Instead they opted for the Sunshine Coast's "Aussie World". It is a poor man's theme park when compared to the huge places on the Gold Coast. But this one was $15 per person entry and included all rides. They had a ball there, no crowds and almost had the place to them selves. They did all the rides they wanted to and even checked out the "Pie Shop" near by for lunch! It proved to be a huge success, the kids loved it and they were $200 better off too.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny 23 degrees too and this helped with the success of the day. It was a bit breezier today and a degree or two cooler.

But it was off to the beach for the morning.

There is a great playground by the beach and the first half hour or so was spent playing with other kids lucky enough to be off school too. The kids had a ball!

Then it was down to the beach. James just loves to run so it was shirt off and into the shallows. He ran and ran and eventually tripped into the water getting soaking wet.

There were runs along the beach, playing in the sand and walking up to the sea water pool for a look as well.

The sausage sizzle for lunch was a great success. The wet clothes were put on the line and should be dry enough to take with them when they depart for the airport around 5 pm tonight.

But there was one last job to do. The kids had to help me mix a brew. It didn't take much encouraging to get them to help out. They did a great job helping. It needed a lot of mixing this brew!

At this stage everything is set for their trip back to Melbourne tonight and then to school tomorrow.

For Nan and Pa this might mean a quiet sleep in and a slowly as it goes day to follow.

An Answering Machine Message

"Hello. You have reached Grandma and Grandpa. We're not able to come to the phone right now. If you are one of our children, dial 1, state your name, and then select from one of the following:

If you need us to watch your children, press 2.
If you want to borrow our car, press 3.
If you want us to do your laundry, press 4.
If you want the grandchildren to sleep here tonight, press 5.
If you want us to pick up the kids at school, press 6.
If you want us to have you to dinner on Sunday or to bring it to your house, press 7.
If you need money, press 8.

If you are calling to invite us to dinner or a movie, start talking; we are listening."

They Are Still Here!

It is a glorious Monday, not a cloud in the sky, around 20 degrees with low 20's expected as a top temp later today! It may be even a little warmer in our small protected back yard.

We still have everyone here following a booking mix-up. The kids are expecting to fly home now on Tuesday. On Sunday we headed to the playground near the beach in Caloundra. It was a popular spot with lots of kids there. Later we walked the main street of Caloundra enjoying the Sunday Markets.

Then it was to the local IGA for a jumbo pack of sausages for a sausage sizzle lunch. We were all a little hungry after such a big morning. I sat to watch the footy during the afternoon while the others hit the local park for a kick of the footy. All too soon it was time to pack and get ready to head off to Maroochydore Airport for the flight home.

Trish dropped them off at the airport but a few minutes later received a mobile phone call saying there had been an error with the airline tickets and Kate, Arj and the family couldn't get out of here until Tuesday evening.

So back they all came. I don't think the kids minded one little bit!

James was up at the usual time Monday morning checking out the cartoons on the media player. As you can see it was a coolish morning! Later after it warmed up a little I went for a ride on the bike.

Today they are making the most of this unwanted delay by checking out some more touristy stuff here on "The Coast". Arj is trying to organize some school stuff from up here as there is a concert item for the school choir to do later in the week and he is going to miss some practice sessions.

And The Rain Poured down!

We have had 2" of rain overnight, the grandkids have been pretty good but they are locked up inside! However I think they are off to the movies this afternoon which will get them out!

They all went to the Ginger factory at Yandina yesterday. There is lots of free stuff there with train rides, boat rides and lovely gardens. Though a little overcast the weather was great for checking things out.

There was also a Chocolate factory to catch up on as well as a "Pick Your Own" Strawberry Farm. It was a pretty good day all round!

I went around to a friend's place to help him connect his older PC to his home network by wireless. He has a good older PC with Vista on it but it didn't seem to want to connect. It was a Dell PC and has recently been repaired and had Vista reinstalled. When I started on it I reckoned there was something wrong with it. It appears the Utilities Disks hadn't been installed. I had to go but I heard from him later the Utilities disk had now all been installed and it seemed to be running beautifully. Perhaps the wireless connection will work a little better now.

The kids got back from the Ginger Factory mid afternoon so I got to go with Kate and Arj to "Trade Secret", a factory outlet store we have here. Before that we had a kick of the footy! I had an extra "Mobic" tablet for my back this morning, it was a bit sore after the big game.

Today I did a bottling and had the pleasure of James helping me, we had a great time and got the job done .... eventually. He was the official bottle shaker to make sure all the sugar was mixed in properly.

While Trish and Kate take the kids to the movies this afternoon, Arj and I will watch the footy live on TV! Arj is a "Blues" supporter and this afternoon the Blues take on the top of the table Collingwood! My team plays tomorrow!

Family Arrive ... At Last

The horrors of Tiger Airways being banned from carrying passengers was over for Kate, Arj and family. They flew into the Sunshine Coast on Tuesday evening.

They arrived at the house around 8:15 pm and after a quick bite to eat it was soon bedtime for the kids, they had had a big day. The grown ups stayed up and chatted away.

On Wednesday they hit "Australia Zoo" and saw crocodiles, elephants, kangaroos, snakes and all sorts of animals. After 4 hours Charli wasn't moving too well so they headed back to our home a little earlier than expected. But they had seen almost everything and the kids had just about had enough.

That gave the kids a chance to help me vacuum the pool. So what is usually a 10 minute task now took 20 minutes. But the pool is now looking a lot better.

Poor Charli had a bad night on Wednesday and neither she nor Trish had a full night's sleep. She still wasn't feeling too well Thursday morning.

Arj had a 5 second swim Thursday morning, and I don't think he will worry about another swim while here. The pool is less than 15 degrees right now. However we did enjoy a 12k bike ride this morning.

Trish stayed home to look after Charli and the rest of us went to the beach. Soon after we arrived James began running everywhere and he was still running an hour later. He sure has more energy than any of the adults here. A four year old kid at the beach on a lovely sunny day meant that great fun was to be had!

Charli was feeling better so she and Trish joined us for a pleasant lunch at King's Beach Tavern. The outing was finished up with Trish cleaning up on the Chocolate Machine, much to James and Charli's delight.

We will all sleep well tonight.

A Chilly Morning But A Sunny Day

I am at home all alone today. Trish has Tourist Information Centre this morning and then an Arts Centre association Meeting this afternoon. Then she will get some grocery shopping done and get back home late in the afternoon.

I have been on my bike ride for 12+k's and I have done a little updating of stuff on my PC. Right now I am having a bit of a browse around my favorite websites.

The other day I bought a "Bike Luggage Rack" off "Sale Of The Day". It arrived this morning so I put it on the bike. I have added a plastic container so I can just drop stuff in it to carry around.

For example yesterday I had run out of bleach for my bottle washing. The supermarket is less than a kilometre away so I jumped on the bike and off I went to buy some more bleach. Now I will have a spot where I can more easily carry items around when using the bike.

I will be keeping my eye open for a better container to bolt onto the very basic luggage rack. But this serves my purpose right now!

I downloaded a whole series of the English Crime program "Cheap Tricks" yesterday afternoon. Each episode is about an hour and is a good 'filler'.

Around 4 Degrees!

The wind has been icy cold and this morning's 12 k bike ride wasn't much fun. Though there wasn't a cloud in the sky, it sure felt quite uncomfortable. It was about 4 degrees early this morning.

We are expecting a top of 21 today which will be some compensation.

Computer Club was busy again. One of the members (who I help out regularly) has just signed with an ISP called ClubTelco. ClubTelco is providing a great plan but the backup leaves a little to be desired. ClubTelco appears to be a rebirth of another low quality cheap ISP called "GoTalk". The Computer Club member wanted to add his ClubTelco email account to Thunderbird. When adding another email account to Thunderbird you need all the email settings. ClubTelco's supplied settings are incomplete so it gets to be a bit of trial and error to get it to work. After an hour I gave up!

A few weeks ago I bought a cheap wireless dongle which when installed to any computer allows it to get on the internet via a local wireless network. It cost less than $10 but has to come from China and takes up to three weeks to be delivered. I have been telling others about them and I have now placed orders for another three of them for people who want to connect to the internet via wireless.

One person has an older non-wireless laptop. Another guy has just updated his PC. The old PC has gone into another room and now he wants to be able to connect it to the internet. The third person, a neighbour, wants one to be able to connect his WD TV Live media player to the internet.

I did a bottle washing today getting ready to bottle some time in the next few days. You can see the stuff drying in the photo above left.

My footy team had a second consecutive loss on Friday night. Hopefully this will be a great 'wake-up' call to them and get them back to playing at their best again. Trish's team won yesterday.

Kate, Arj and the grand kids are due here on Tuesday for 5 nights. Our other daughter Kim was planning to visit late in July but the extended ban put on Tiger flights has put a stop to that visit.

Quiet And Laid Back!

The wind is a little chilly but it is still in the low 20's in our backyard. It was a cool 6 degrees or so this morning but soon warmed up.

Yesterday Trish and I had all sorts of problems trying to upload a web site Trish had built for a friend Anne Atkin. We had the new username and password for the website sent on to us. Usually you just log into the hosting site using username and password and quickly sort out uploading the raw website from your PC to the online site. The came the time to test it so we typed in www.atkinart.com and got nothing on our web browser! We did it all again, deleted the webite from online and then carefully uploaded it all again.

We then tried to access the site online and still it wouldn't work.

We tried some other passwords and again nothing came online at atkinart.com I was about ready to throw the laptop into the pool when I got Trish to again check her emails with all the information on them. We had been at it for about an hour all without luck.

And then we found it, the website was actually www.anneatkinart.com! Typed in the CORRECT address and there it was.

Then there was more fine tuning to do. My Computer monitor is set to 1920 x 1080 while Trish's laptop monitor is set to 1366 x 768. So what looked great on her laptop look spaced out and stupid on mine. On my PC some of the different heading styles and fonts were obvious while not on the laptop. You get a bit of an idea on what I mean if you click on the screenshot of the website above left. That is taken from my larger screened PC.

It is all looking pretty good now and we hope Anne is pleased with the outcome.

www.anneatkinart.com

It Is Wednesday Already!

Things have kind of 'flown' this week since we heard the kids aren't coming till next week now because of the grounding here of Tiger Airways over a "Safety Breach".

Both our footy teams were beaten on the weekend, the first defeat for this season for my team. It wasn't "Live" here but 30 minutes delayed. Therefore we kept up with the up to date scores via the internet. Knowing the scores really spoilt it, but meant I didn't have the agony of watching it directly. I did watch the last 15 minutes or so and the team I saw playing then was heaps more desperate than the team I saying playing at the beginning of the game.

On Monday afternoon I headed around to a friend's home to help him set up a new wireless modem/router. Things didn't go smoothly but we eventually got all his computers (3 of them) to connect either by ethernet cable and by wireless. We did have to change a lot of settings though to get it to work.

Then I had a (BeCA) Community Association meeting on Monday night and the resultant huge update required for the BeCA Website the next day. This also involved emails to our local Councillor as well as emails to the estate's developer Stockland. I added up to seven photos to the website too. All of which took time. You can see the 'entry' HERE.

Then yesterday afternoon I went around to another friend's place to help him get a couple of programs up and running.

Trish had an Info Centre "Breakfast" yesterday.

The weather has been sensational. Mornings are coolish, today it was around 8 degrees but days have been low 20's and not a cloud in the sky. I have been bike riding each morning and getting my 12+k's in. I saw this chap yesterday morning. It is a harmless carpet snake and they are are fairly common around this part of the world.

Trish has Stitchers this morning and I have a home brew to put on.

Kate Arj and the family are due here Tuesday evening and head back to Melbourne Sunday evening. Hopefully the weather will be sunny for them while they are here.

Safety Breach

We don't like getting phone calls at 4:00 am but that is what happened this morning. Kate and the grand kids were due to fly in to Maroochydore with Tiger Airways this morning and arrive just after 10:00 a.m. However the budget airline has been grounded as of 11 pm last night owing to "Safety Breaches' and all flights have been cancelled until next Saturday. Kate rang soon after 4 .am. to tell us the news.

The grand kids are disappointed as too are we. But that is a risk we take when we fly with any budget airline.

The kids will get a full refund and have now booked to fly here a week or so later. Their options were to take an alternative flight today (at around $400 per person), wait and book again for later during the school holidays, or to drive up here. They have opted to book with Jetstar Airlines and will fly here on Tuesday week. It is a couple of hundred dollars dearer but the best they could do in the circumstances.

Yesterday was pretty hectic around here getting ready for our visitors. I washed the car for the first time since we drove home from Melbourne in January. Never again will I let it go so long after such a long trip. We had passed through roadworks back then so I was cleaning tar off the paintwork which had been there for 6 months! And there was still some 'ingrained' remains of bugs as well. I had to use polish to remove a lot of the marks.

The pool was vacuumed yesterday and the lawn was mowed. I also cleaned the BBQ getting rid of gunk which had built up over previous months!

Needless to say my dodgy back is not moving well at all! At least now I can get back to the chiropractor to have it treated and tasks which have needed doing have now all been done.

Trish has been busy updating the Arts Association website, she added about 20 photos as thumbnails with a link so that when you clicked on the smaller photo you were taken to another page for a 'larger view'. Once she got the hang of it all went well. She is rightly very pleased with herself. Check out what she has done HERE.