Worlds Combined

It was great to have 100+ people join us at the Woolshed Hotel in Bordertown for our engagement party last Saturday night. Almost all of our close friends & family there to "Help us celebrate the excitement of our engagement."(as the invite stated) The food was also excellent. Naturally, I ordered the plate with the most types of meat in it, which happened to be the 'Stockmans Grill' which featured:

• A small rump steak
• A chop
• A prawn
• Chicken
• Rashers of Bacon
  
• 1 Sausage

The deliciousness of the above was complimented with fries and later on some delicious mud-cake made by my mum! Our different worlds did combine, with friends from home, Uni friends from Ballarat & Adelaide, together there with family from both Melbourne, Adelaide and SE of South Australia. It was a wonderfull weekend of seeing people & celebrating.

It was so much fun I'm thinking of having another big celebration (or two) sometime in the next year or so!

Drought: A second comparison

Way back in January I posted photos comparing a normal wheat harvest to last years drought. Now I'm home for the holidays I can provide an update as to what things are looking like around here, and a comparision to 2006.

These photos where taken yesterday of a Canola crop in full-flower next to my house:
This photo was taken on October 3 2006, where the canola was just past flowering:
We have been very lucky in that we have recieved good rain so far this year, but it has been quite dry for the last 4-5 weeks, and so we still need some significant rain to finish off the year well. But spare a thought for those in the mallee & elsewhere who are far more worse-off than ourselves, their crops look nothing like what is posted above, and there are real fears that many people will simply walk away from their farms & livelihoods.

The quest for the Holy Grail

Last Friday at work I attained the ultimate in call-center work. I reached the pinnacle of my job. It will never better than it was on Friday. I may possibly never work a shift that good again in my entire life and because of this I almost resigned on the spot so I could do a 'Steve Bracks' and quit while I'm at the top. So what happened on Friday at work that was so awesome? I wasn't promoted, I didn't get a pay rise & my work was the same as any other day. So what happened? The answer: nothing. I attained the holy grail of IT support. No calls for my entire shift. Ok, so it was only a 2.5 hour shift, but I still got money for nothing. It will never get any better than that.

Thanks to APEC & the public holiday in Sydney, the calls where few and far between. I actually think that APEC was worth it because of the above, and the fact that the Chaser team got to stage a fake Canadian Motorcade. It certainly didn't achieve anything for the good of the planet. If only HECS & HELP debt repayments were "aspirational & non-binding."

Now stop typing Jonny, before you get angry that innocent people can get locked up overnight without legal recourse in THIS COUNTRY for accidentally crossing the road at the wrong time.

A Peak at The Future

This time 1 week ago I had just finished a delicious $12 meal on O'Connell St & was strolling with Tiarnee through North Adelaide marvelling at some of the obscenely large houses that exist there. It was a great weekend, where we could just hang-out for once without the pressures of 'seeing' & hanging around our family. We could actually just 'live' a little bit, we didn't have to squeeze 2 weeks of catching up with each other into 48 hours. It was nice.

I also got to have a bit of a look through my future work-place. It was very cool. Don't know exactly what I'll be doing, but I'll be programming something, most likely web-orientated stuff(hopefully!) in Java or C#. The corporate world looks to be a very different world to the one I'm used to. I don't think I'll mind being at the bottom of the food chain (corporate ladder). Oh, & I DON'T have to wear a suit to work. Standard dress in the office is jeans and T-shirts. Which I'm very happy about. Almost as awesome as the dress-code, is the fact that I might be getting flown to Melbourne one weekend and put up in Crown-Towers to attend seminars and stuff. Food, flights, accommodation etc. included. Hopefully it happens!

Anyway, the weekend came at just the right time. Reminded me not to get too bogged down at Uni, and that yes, after all these years of study I'm finally working towards something tangible.

Lame?

Tiarnee is twenty today,
She is sadly so far away
"Happy Birthday to you"
and a prayer or two
Just seem like the right things to say.