Wow! Back at the office and now I can sit back and relax! A very very hectic weekend….
Saturday morning and I was off to see my Tax Accountant for my annual pilgrimage to get a few pennies from the coffers of Johnny Howard and I always live in fear that my tax guy will look at my Group Certificate and declare that my work’s payroll dept has stuffed up and I owe an obscene amount of money… but although it was a long session, it ended with me getting a return that was more than double that I what I was hoping for…. So it was worth it in the end and a nice way to start the weekend.
Dashed off to cricket, expecting it to be washed out as it was bucketing down in the mountains, but my match at Wentworthville was able to be played under overcast but dry conditions… I wish it was washed out though as we went from a solid position by keeping the opposition at 2/73 off 29 to 5/302 at stumps!! Yee gods we conceded nearly 250 runs in a session! The bowlers didn’t bowl bad but we dropped a horrendous amount of catches (10 I am told) and over half of those were what you would call “dollys”. There number 6 and 7 batsmen finished 106 and 88 not out respectively… in all, probably one of the worst days of cricket I have had. But as the saying goes, tomorrow (or at least next Saturday) is another day and as long as we don’t capitulate in our batting and be solid, we can take some solace out of that. Still, if they can do it, perhaps we can go one run better J.
Saturday night was then dinner at Mum & Dads in which Mum cooked up some spag bowl and we had a few bottles of Pinot (well they did, Niki and I were both driving) and we played the Margaret Pomerantz (sp?) and David Stratton Movie Trivia game… essentially trivial pursuit for movie buffs. I, as I have always known, am NOT a movie buff and I came last but I was left steaming that most of my questions focused on 1950, 60 or 70 movies whilst my parents were left the questions on Lord of the Rings… aaggghh! And there were soooooo many questions involving Matt Damon!! Why?? Margaret Pomerantz needs to get out more methinks…
Sunday was “Harvest the Weeds Day” at my place and I put my lawnmower through its paces and the job was done by 10am. My foot long grass was whittled down nicely, and then I was off to my brother in laws house to continue painting his fence in prep for their big wedding day in 2 weeks. Finished that at 4 in the afternoon (about the same time the Aussies wrapped up the Windies in
Dinner went on until 9pm and I was in bed by 9:30 absolutely knackered.
Now I can sit here at my desk all day at work… sounds kind of soothing!
PS – big shout out to my mate Steve who got engaged in the
My posts have been erratic because I have not been taking my laptop home each night because I have taken to reading on the train instead of working. I borrowed Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” from my good friend Tommy “ozjesting” Dean and have been unable to put it down.
So with the weather being very humid which makes carting my laptop home from work and back each day annoying (particularly whilst wearing a suit) I have decided to travel “light” and pack only the book. I am two thirds through the book, so it won’t be long before I am forced due to boredom to carry the laptop again.
My laptop for the record is about 4yrs old and is fairly heavy by today’s standards. It is a hefty Dell number and compared to the one I had at a previous employer a few years ago, it feels like I am carrying three house bricks around.
Speaking of alternative employers, I met a prospective new employer yesterday. Went very well, but I found the role seems to be smaller to the one I am doing now in terms of technical scope, but has the added perks of better dollars and more international travel to exotic locations… (
The weekend ahead will be full of yard work. My own backyard is a jungle and the girls refuse to go outside at the moment! Grass is about a foot deep! With my inadvertent trip to the Gold Coast, the rains and the fact I dumped so much fertiliser on it 3 weeks ago, the backyard now looks like you could hold a pride of lions in it without anyone noticing… As far as I know, the dog is still with us and hasn’t gotten lost!
Then after I do my own yard, my brother-in-law Michael who gets married in 3 weekends time in his backyard is racing against time to finish his landscaping. I will be spending Sunday afternoon at his place at Springwood helping him out….
In between, there is cricket, dinner with Mum & Dad and I understand friends of ours Glenn & Brooke are coming over for Sunday dinner… plus I see my tax accountant on Saturday at the princely hour of 9am!! You can see why I am so flat chat!
Well I am back at the office and of course back on the trains. I have overslept a bit this morning (damn Daylight Saving changeover!) and have had to meet the train at Emu Plains. I cannot believe the amount of bugs and flies that are about though. The blowies are everywhere and with all this rain, they swarm over everyone at the train station and I can’t recall seeing so many of them. Then on the train, the carriages are still infested with Bogan Moths that flap about the window panes all the way into the city. All I want for Xmas is a bug swatter!
Today is Melbourne Cup day and I just cant get into this ridiculous event. There is horse racing on every weekend all year and it never stops, yet somehow we are supposed to get excited by a single race on a Tuesday. I appreciate the opportunity to get an hour off work to have a beer or a wine and some cheese but Jesus, do we need to have every news paper full of it? Front page, back page, all the middle pages. Women in ridiculous hats. Men dressed in drag. It drives me bonkers. I know I sound like a whinger, but I seriously think the hype is over the top. Makybe Diva will make a FINAL decision to run or not at midday today… seriously, we have been talking about one horse in one race for a fortnight. Give it a rest!
On my personal front, I have found myself talking to a recruiting agent about another role at another company. The role sounds good, possibly better than my current one, and is for better dollars. I said they had better offer me something wonderful to consider it and gave them a astronomical ballpark. The agent said he would let me know. I now have an interview Thursday. I feel uncomfortable with the whole process. You want to sound out what you could get at another organisation. You’re basically happy where you are now. Yet, you don’t want to pass up a good opportunity. To do so, you need to discretely meet with other people away from the office. I need to fabricate reasons to duck out for 90mins. I know that this stuff happens all the time, and I am not really thinking that I will take this opportunity, but you never know.
Still on work, after a week away, I seem to have lost my thread in a number of projects I have on the go here. You can never pick a time to have to attend to family issues and I probably shouldn’t have been away from the office at such a critical time in a few projects. I left Friday week back with the message to one person in particular to get something out the door on Monday. Well I have come back, and he hasn’t lifted a finger and my boss has asked me to do it for him. Took me an hour. Another project I have involves getting lawyers to review contracts and they were to deliver last Monday. I come in and find nothing on my desk. Rang said law firm (who we pay handsomely) and am told that they have an issue and may need to ring a third party to discuss. How long have they been sitting on this issue? A week! Would they have rung on their own accord? No! Would they have rung me to discuss the issue instead of me chasing them? Hell no! Makes you wonder how some people get by in business.
**Great now I have a fly and a Bogan Moth attacking me**
I know I have been dribbling about not so important stuff, but I do want to write something about these new anti-terror laws. I have been deeply disturbed about the potential ramifications on all this from a civil liberties perspective (and I think the civil libertarians are generally idiots) but I want to write something that’s accurate and not a rant about conspiracy theories. Believe me, that’s hard for me to do J
Oh, and one more thing, congrats to my friends Enoch & Anitha for “being in the family way”. Married for not quite a year… up the duff already! Bewdy Mate!!
