The 25th was of course Alissa's birthday and mine followed the next day. Australia day, a day of Aussie flags, meat pies, parties and back-yard cricket. When I laughed at some of the stuff people we were wearing and doing, Alissa very rightly pointed out.... "Ehhhh St Patricks Day???". Point taken. We had 24 hours to ourselves without Aibhe - who was being spoilt as usual by Barb & Geoff - as we headed off to Toowoomba, a small country town about an hour and a half west of here. Not much there except for a nice quiet hotel room and a restaurant. And some welcome uninterrupted sleep for Alissa. What has stuck out in my mind about this place is the press it received last year when they decided to vote AGAINST using recycled water - with no alternative being put forward. So now their dams are at a dangerous low of 11% with no water in sight. Muppets.
While we we were without child, we took in the Andy Warhol exhibition in the Brisbane cultural centre which was pretty cool - only place in Australia it's being shown apparantly. The guy was certainly talented - albeit a bit bonkers, but talented.A shindig of the BBQ nature was had to celebrate the birthdays, Australia day and the technical completion of the house renovations. We had about 35 people here (including kids) at one point and for a time, about half were in the pool. Great way of getting them knackered out. A successful afternoon/early evening, though am sure at this point, having been pregnant for pretty much a year now, Alissa would like to be enjoying a BBQ where she could actually drown a few vino's.
We've had a week of wonderful weather - with plenty of swimming pool use - in fact Aibhe literally has to walk out on the balcony, see it to remind herself that we have it and she wants in. So I've spent quite an amount of time in there too and am sneezing away for the past couple of days. Now the rain is back - perfect timing for filling up the depleted pool again.
Great to chat to most of the lads recently - in particular a reasonably successful skype conference call with DG and Kieran. It does work! And cheers for the phone calls on my birthday. Even though a bloke, being so far away from home, it's appreciated.
Ginge & Michelle, well, it must be pretty damn close to doubling your family size in an instant. Good luck with it all and looking forward to hearing all about initial life with twins.
Well I won't be giving blood again. My one big selfless contribution to the world in general is over for the moment. A couple of weeks back, I seemingly successfully gave blood for the 3rd time. the needle came out, I got up from the bed and then sat down for my cheese, biscuits and juice and then woke up lying down with 3 people over me calling out "Edna, Edna!!". I was too f&cked at the time to correct my name, and apparantly I was out for about a minute. Been a long time since I keeled over like that, and on the previous two occasions I was in a church - which when ye think about it, says something. Anyway, had to rest up for about 20 minutes before they would let me go back to work - even then they weren't too happy with me going. They were right. I barfed about an hour later outside our buildling - fortunately no one was around to observe my minced salad sandwich all over the ground. I was informed that low blood pressure induces nausea. Felt great once it was out mind you.
Have I mentioned I have taken up tennis again? No more contact sports for me at this stage of my injury career. Swimming, tennis and golf keeps my competitors at a safe distance. I had forgotten just how much I enjoyed it. I hadn't hit a ball in anger for over 6 years and it showed in my first service game with 4 double faults...... but by the end of the two hours the eye was in and I had the lads going further and further back to deal with the serve. All those years of intense competition and rivalry with Messrs Moore, O'Meara, O'Brien and Pilkington each one with the ability to throw a racquet a long way over a fence - have culminated in my having a nice quiet couple of social tennis hours a week. But I still get very pissed off when I miss.
Hey Rach. Where's Wally?
