Category: Family

Posts about my family.

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Another year passing away

This year has flown by, both work and home life have been amazingly busy.
Milestones have come and gone this year:

  • I am now 45
  • my daughter turns 20 in a week
  • my son turned 14
  • in December I will celebrate my 25th wedding anniversary
  • one full year as a public servant has come and gone
  • the computer system upgrade I have been working on for 2 years has gone live

There are however many things I have not done this year (mostly due to time constraints due to the last item above) that I am planning to do next year. First and foremost would be a real holiday, you know all the family go somewhere and do something., Tasmania seems like a likely spot.

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Long time

Ok with the new job and new project, I have not been updating this blog as much as I would like.

So here are a few updates.  Man I must be getting old.  My daughter starts University this year (she is doing a teaching degree) and my son starts High School.  Dani is still working school hours which is good and I am in the middle of one of the largest projects I have ever done.

With all the natural disasters all around Australia I am feeling lucky and privileged not to be directly impacted.  However family have been located in the disaster areas and all have come through fine.

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Where has this year gone!

Ok this year time has flown so fast.  Seems like it was only a couple of months ago I was with the in-laws for Christmas.  Now we are planning to have my family over this year.  Three brothers, their partners and kids, my Mum and Dad and my wife and kids.  It will be a full house, a very full house.  They are all coming down from Queensland, with this being the start of my parents “Grey Nomad” experience.

So my parents and my eldest brother will be down in their respective caravans, my middle brother will be staying near our place in a cabin and hopefully my little brother will be down for a few days staying at our place or in a cabin.  My little brother is overcoming a bought of cancer and the subsequent treatment, he is doing really well and will have the results of his latest checkup just before Christmas.

I have had a lot of things happen over the last few weeks but will put them up in other posts soon.

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Father’s Day

I had a great day yesterday.  I was given some shirts, a diary, Turkish delight and musk lollies.  After breakfast we went to Temora, home of the famous Temora Aviation Museum. 

Temora has the philosophy that all its exhibits must be not only capable of flying but are flown regularly.  They have approx 6 flying days a year where more than half their planes are flown.  These are not big aerobatic events, but the planes are put through their paces on a small field close to the crowd.  These guyswant their planes to be still flying in 50 years.

Yesterday they were flying their Sabre for the first time in public, such a great plane.  They also had a visiting FA 18 Hornet.  The hornet performed a “Power Display”, man that thing was amazing.  They seem to fly it like a rally driver drives a car.  They point the nose in the direction they want to go then floor it, the more tail slide the better!

You can see some of my photos on Flickr.

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Telecommunications is a wonderful thing

Ok as you saw we had “issues” with our phone. Yesterday morning the repairman came and climbed up the pole at the back of the house (yep pole, yep backyard, Canberra is a strange place) and tested the line. Well needless to say it was BAD, so 4 or 5 poles later he found the offending junction, once fixed he tested the line to confirm the fine was working. All good.

So last night I reconfigured the modem to ADSL2+ ( I was running ADSL2 for stability) and the “new” connect speeds exceed 10Mbs. Compaired to 0.6Mbs while it was faulty and 3.6Mbs “before” the fault I am very happy.

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Faulty Phone

For the last few weeks the home phone has been incredibly noisy. I believe it is something to do with all the wind and rain, as we have an aerial lead in line to the house. I have looked at the cabling under the house (which is not very pretty) and determined that it is all sound and dry.

It has got worse just lately, the last 5 days we have no dial tone and anyone ringing us just rings out. I bypassed our central adsl filter (conveniently located right in the middle under the house) with no improvement. During this time our ADSL speed has dropped to 1/6th of what it normally is to a pitifully low 0.5Mb a second.

The technician is due tomorrow morning so hopefully it will be resolved.

Sorry for anyone trying to contact us… however our mobiles still work.

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Evacuated – 4:15 am

Ok we had a rude awakening this morning as a way too loud policeman was bashing on our door. Seems that some nutter had stolen a tradesman’s van, taken some tools and then dumped it in the park over the road.  They then decided to torch it.

The fire brigade got there about 2:30 and had the fire suppressed fairly quickly.  However when they inspected the wreck they noticed one or more compressed gas tanks in the back.  Closer inspection showed them to be Oxy-Acetylene.  They checked the tempreture of the tanks and confirmed they were still rising due to “internal activity”.

At that time the bomb squad was called and an exclusion zone with a radius of over 200 meters was created.  That included our house.

I need sleep right now.

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Little brother has cancer

A couple of weeks ago my brother was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  He went to his doctor about an enlargement in one of his lymph nodes in his neck.  After two biopsy’s they confirmed that he had Cancer.  A full body scan showed another enlargement in his chest cavity, indicating Stage 2 lymphoma.

He start chemotherapy this Friday in Townsville.  He has had to move himself and his family 900km’s into a Cancer Council provided apartment for 6 months.  His wife, nine month old boy and himself had to packup his house, arrange for it to be leased out and relocate in the space of a week.  His employer has been fantastic, arranging leave and covering his income until his income insurance kicks in.

The outcome looks good, he is fit and healthy and the success rate for curing this form of cancer is over 90%.  My thoughts go to his lovely wife that will be bearing the load of looking after him and their son.

(Wedding in 2205)
(Wedding in 2005)
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Mum’s Accident

My mother has a little 50cc Honda scooter to get about the small city she lives in.  However on Sunday she had an accident and fell off the scoot and onto the traffic island in the middle of the road.  I only have a few details but it looks like mum clipped the concrete curb on the island and was thrown off the bike.

Although she was only going slowly around the corner her Humerus was broken just below the ball at the top.  Mum will be on painkillers for a while and will have the arm immobilised for a couple of months.

Wishing her all the best.

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Dani’s Shoulder

Dani went into hospital last Tuesday to have her right shoulder operated on.  The doctors diagnoses Bersitius a while back but were not keen to refer her to a surgeon.  However after 18 months since the incident  that caused the problem and the shoulder only getting worse, we insisted on the referal.

So the operation removed the excess fluid, soft tissue and a bone spur found in her shoulder.  Within 3 days of the operation Dani had more movement than for the last 12 months, today she was able to brush her own hair and put it into a pony tail using her right arm.

The doctor is removing the stitches on Thursday and I will give you all an update.

Danis Fixed Shoulder
Dani's Fixed Shoulder
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Treatment

Well I am still not well.  I am still getting headaches most days. My neurologist has given me a different set of tablets and at least they don’t effect my mood but they are not effecting my headaches either.

So I have decided to attach this problem on several fronts.  I have found a Chinese Medicine practitioner and he is giving my acupuncture and  herbal treatments and a Chiropractor to work on my neck and back.  They are both happy that I am seeing the other and believe that the dual treatment should work out for me.   Over the last week I have noticed some improvements and I am just praying that it is not a placebo effect.

If none of this works the neurologists next option is to give me Botox injections every 3 to 4 months.  Not my idea of fun.

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Still here – Honest

Sorry for the lack of posts this year. Due to known issues and usual winter colds and flu’s I have been offline more than online.

Recently we moved our family to a new house and are still unpacking boxes and sorting out rooms.  During the move our phone company (who is also our ISP provider) lost the order to have the phone relocated.  This means we have been without communications (except mobile phone) for just over a week and still have a week and a half to wait until connected.

So if you have sent us emails or called up our phone number, sorry, we should be back online around the 8th Nov.

Till then have a happy time.

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Creative Prose

My son’s (8 years old) homework includes the standard question “Make a sentence that includes your spelling words”.  So her are a few from his latest collection:

  • A shield get(s) battered and dented, a sword gets blood on it, the dark side is doomed.
  • Fourth does not get on the podium.
  • Why do I have to.. why.. WHY?

I love the last one, I think he wanted to stop doing his homework.  🙂

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Back from holidays

OK so we are home from our two weeks away.  What can I say, glad to be back but the break was not long enough to do all we wanted.  Photos and posts will be forthcoming over the next week.

For all the people we did not get to see (MW) sorry for our lack of planning and schedule.  For those we did it was great.

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Another year!

Well I have survived another year on this planet! With one year left before I hit the magic 40 I am happy with my life, family and future. We have all fitted into Canberra quiet well Dani is getting a good amount of casual work, the kids are doing well at school with my girl getting awards for her English and Science and by little boy working and playing hard. Down here I have had more opportunities and job offers I have ever had in my life, it is so good to be wanted.

Besides the extra grey hair I got some great stuff this year. A new tire for my scooter (I have worn the old one out with over 13000km’s), a new razor (I think I got this because my wife is tired of me using hers), a cool Mag Warrior and the movie Serenity as a special boxed edition.

I am currently going through a detailed security check by the Australian government so that I can work on my government accounts and opportunities. So I must say a big thank you to my friends that have acted as referee’s for me.