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Monday 2nd May 2005

Well, we are back online now and in our new home. The Internet connection appeared tonight with no notice - we were told that it would be Wednesday before we would be back on line, but I had wired everything up so that it would start working as soon as it went live - and a little light had changed from orange to green to indicate that I have my 'fix' for my addiction to the Internet.

It's been a tiring week for us all, and Thomas has been a bit difficult as he wants to get his hands into everything, and always seems to be under our feet or demanding to go outside or into another room.
Thomas has been enjoying his outside area, riding his trike up and down the covered paved outdoor area (photos soon...).

Ann seems to have done 5 full loads of washing, I seem to have filled the garage with empty cardboard boxes and still we have a room full of packed boxes.
We have been quite successful in sorting out areas, and unpacking stuff. We are both astonished at how much crap we have accumilated over the years - including 2½ kitchens. There are still some small things that have not turned up, but they will be somewhere - we hope.

Liam and Shirley have been incredible with all their help, and so the old house is completely clean and signed off. In my last (oven cleaning) trip to the old house, we had forgotten to clear the rubbish out of the shed - so I had to just bring it to our new house instead of getting rid of it.

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Tuesday 3rd May 2005

After a tiring day at work, I came home and did some more work around the house. Over the last few days I have repaired the flyscreen door at the back of the house (hopefully we won't walk through this one!) and put up a new fly screen outside the bathroom window, where there was no screen. There are some other flyscreens that I can repair over the next few days.

We have found that the house has a buried sprinkler system for the lawn and the front garden. It was quite a shock when we hooked up the hose and the sprinklers popped up out of nowhere and squirted water around.

There are lots of repairs around the house and garden which are very simple, which makes me wonder why the previous owners had not done them... It also makes it easy for us to quickly and easily improve the house - and it's value.

Thomas had another good day at daycare today, but his seperation anxiety is still making it hard to leave him. Ann then had the freedom to clean, wash and iron pretty much everything in the house - the place is looking great now. All of our packed boxes are just in one room, and we have found nearly everything that we need.

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Wednesday 4th May 2005

I have put up some pictures of the outside of the house. I will take some photos of the inside of the house some time after this weekend - we want to finish putting some more pictures up and get rid of boxes first!

I took the afternoon off work today so that I could help in the removal of our old oven and the installation of the new one. We were told when we bought the new oven that if there was any modification or demolition of existing cabinets to be done, that the installers would have to go away and come back when it was done. So, we decided that I should be at home to be on hand to do any modifications or clean up.
So, I got all my tools ready for the arrival of the oven and the installers at 2:30pm. When no-one turned up at 3pm, Ann called up to find that the installers were stuck on the last job. We were both annoyed that they had not called us to let us know, and then even more annoyed to find out that the reason that the previous job was so behind was because they had had to wait for 2½ hours before starting their work. After a few phone calls, it is all re-arranged for 7:30 on Saturday morning.
It will take me a few weeks to work some extra hours to make up for the afternoon that I took off.

One thing that happened today that was good and lifted our spirits was that we had a delivery. Liam and Shirley have bought us a wooden table and chairs for the outside verandah at the back of the house. It's a fantastic square wooden table with nine 'directors' chairs, with padded green upholstery. It's a substantial size, and fits the area really well. The best thing is that the 8 chairs is just enough for Ann, me, Liam, Shirley, Linda, Ashley, Marie and Victoria. We also have two more directors chairs for Thomas and Brendan, and they have a similar shade of green seating and so everything outside matches - even our old garden furniture and the pots that the plants are in.

Linda dropped in on her way home, and was just in time to join us sitting outside having a glass of wine in the warm and comfortable evening. Thomas was playing in the garden and we showed him how the lawn sprinklers work - so we had to give him a bath afterwards.

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Thursday 5th May 2005

Shirley had been kind enough to adjust our net curtains for the front lounge room, and then Ann and I had to ask each other where they came from. We have these nets that are ideal for the large double glass doors in the lounge, but neither of us know where we originally got them for.

It's mother's day in Australia this Sunday. Thomas has bought something for his mummy, and Ann is going to be pampered on Saturday, whilst Thomas and I go shopping in the City. A few weeks ago, my mother called me on a Sunday to say that she was calling me on mother's day to save me the cost of the international call, but I was totally unaware that it was mother's day in England. So, I have sent her a mother's day card for the Australian mother's day.

There is one large disappointment about the new house for me - the streetlights. In the old house, I could set up my telescope just outside the house, and see even the dim stars (down to a magnitude of 8, where the dimmest stars visible with the naked eye are a magnitude of 6) and the milky way. Now, the streetlights shine down into the garden and so I can only see the very brightest stars (down to a magnitude of 2 or 3). So, now if I want to look at the stars like I used to, I will have to drive off to a dark place to look at the stars.

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Friday 6th May 2005

So Blair is back in... It's been followed (loosely) in the news in Australia, but we have been largely spared the details and boredom of an election. It's the same around the world with all the leaders being re-elected (Blair, Bush, Howard), and I think that it's just because there is no credible opposition, because of the general apathy that people have had for politics and politicians. All the political parties have become so similar that there is no real difference - they are all as useless as each other.

They are starting to build an Ikea store in Adelaide - next to the upgraded airport.

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