Short Week - Wet N Wild

One thing I haven't mentioned is that we're off to the Gold Coast this weekend, leaving Thursday night and not back until Monday.  It's my Nan's 80th birthday and the family are trekking up there for a big lunch on the Sunday.

 

But we've taken the opportunity to pack the kids into a plane, fly up early and head to the Wet'N'Wild theme park on Friday before the extended family arrives later in the day.  The girls are really looking forward to it, as am I and Kate in particular seems to have no fear of the rides from the look of them on the website.

 

We'll wait until we get there though and she sees how big they are!!

 

Going on a Friday though during the school term should pretty much mean we will have the park pretty much to ourselves (touch wood) and that will mean less queuing, more action!

 

Will be posting some pics I am sure!

Take The Handwriting Quiz...

I dont normally do these online things with an intent to post them, but I found this description of me pretty accurate... (cue freaky music)

What Your Handwriting Says About You

You are sometimes a very energetic person, but you are sometimes quite lethargic. You're moody, prone to ups and downs, and you don't have a lot of endurance. You are somewhat outgoing, but you're not a natural extrovert. You think first before you act. You tend to be independent, rational, and logical. You are balanced and grounded. You know how to get along well with others. You need a bit of space in your life, but you're not a recluse. You expect people to give you a small amount of privacy, and you respect their privacy as well. You are somewhat traditional, but you are also open to change. You listen to your head and your heart. You are a decent communicator. You eventually get your point across, but sometimes you leave things a bit ambiguous.

What Does Your Handwriting Say About You?

Puzzle Girl

My mum & dad gave Brooke a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle for her 6th birthday last March. It was a bit of a daunting task for a little girl, but she had a crack... then put it away.... had another crack and put it away again.

And now, she's doing it.

6 years old, she sits on the table with the pieces spread out around her and she's doing it by herself and I reckon she's not quite halfway through.

She's made that much progress probably over the past week as you can see below, but she really is amazing at it.

I sat down with her last night and was gazing at the mass of pieces with my eyes glazed over... we were working on one corner of the puzzle which was a primarily blue and white section.

I'm looking for the pieces that would go in there and was struggling to find them in the jumble and yet Brooke's not only finding them, she's placing them.

Then amazingly she grabs a greeny-black bit straight off the pile, turns 90 degrees and puts it down in the correct slot! I looked at her and she simply said "that bit goes there."

She's a bit freaky our Brooke... we're calling her Puzzle Girl with the "Freaky Puzzle Eyes"...

I guess we all have our super powers!

CrackBerry's

Skimming the paper, I saw this article on Blackberry's...

 

I have one and I am finding it both addictive and intrusive.  I can remember getting my first work email account back in the mid-90's and it was going to be amazing how much more free time you will have with such a nifty application.  Our desktops were all individually hooked up to the Internet via our own dial up modems and there would be a cacophany of sound as the modems would wirr and beep every morning.  The speed was amazing as it took "just minutes" to load a website.

 

We had a 12 year old boy - a nephew of an employee - come in and design a website for my work and it took him just 4 hours and he got $200!  (We werent terribly concerned that the website looked like it had been designed by a 12 year old boy, that wasnt the point!)

 

The new age of "greater efficiency at the office equating to greater hours of relaxation time" had arrived.

 

Now, fast forward 10-12 years, this morning my neighbour in the next cube is tired because he has been dealing with our partners in Spain all weekend via his Blackberry and laptop, my boss is in a tizz because some deal has gone awry over the weekend and he has 100's of emails in his system, I myself spent the greater part of my train trip in dealing with an issue from our Adelaide office that cropped up over the weekend and we all have these little black devices within arm reach of us 24x7 to deal with any crisis that may arise.

 

And thats the difference... with email, the definition of a "crisis" has changed... basically it is now expected that you deal with ANYTHING that comes onto your email - either via the work PC or the BlackBerry - with immediate expediancy.  No longer do we "deal with it on Monday", but now it is the norm that things are dealt with before anything else - even if thats a family matter.

 

Sad, but true, we are now working longer than ever before....

Finnish School Shooting

Another shooting tragedy yesterday combining disaffected teenager, YouTube and a gun... probably since the dawn of time, teenagers do it tough as they go through the angst of puberty... it must be true because what else would the Violent Femmes have sung about?

 

But anyway, it was said in the various press re this tragedy that Finland surprisingly has the 3rd highest gun ownership rate in the world... behind the USA and Yemen!

 

Now we dont get much free press out of Yemen, but I assume they have a fairly high gun crime rate and along with the US events of recent years, there is one common denominator... GUNS.

 

Do we really need to keep pushing this idea?  Do people really still dont get it?  If we got rid of the guns from the regular family homes, none of these things would happen!

 

Lets not crucify teenagers, lets not talk about the power of the Internet and social networking sights like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, lets talk about why and how a teenager can get his hands on a gun.

 

Seems so obvious, but why do people struggle to get this done?

Yes Please!

My ultimate household appliance!

 

With my birthday coming up, dont be daunted by the US$2000 price tag, get bidding!!!

 

Ideal Gift Idea For The Man About The House

New Painting Project - Nurgle Rotters

Am painting up a new Blood Bowl team for CanCon in January... am playing / painting a Nurgle Rotters team... for those not familiar with Warhammer fantasy, Nurgle is the Chaos Daemon of Decay...

Firstly, the Nurgle Warriors... they were Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Warriors, with the mutation sprues and painted in a nice shade of green which actually was base coated a light brown but with overlaying green washes...



And here are the Pestigors... the team ball handlers / blitzers... They were Warhammer Plaguebearer of Nurgle figures with the weapons clipped off. Very happy with these... with some yellowish pus coming out too as a nice touch :)


Beast of Nurgle and the general rotter linemen to come :)