Hooray! Our laptop has been fixed so we are now able to e-mail more regularly, use Skype and I'm able to work from home instead of having to venture into the computer room and use one of the network PCs. I thought I'd celebrate by showing you a picture of Australia. This is what it looks like. I think it's pretty beautiful and I didn't even take a photo of the best bits.
Last night (Friday) I was at a party to celebrate the launch of the 2007 Rhino Awards. The awards are organised by Dubbo Chamber of Commerce and Industry and it's kind of like the Oscars for local businesses. It's a big deal in Dubbo. Pizza Runners won a couple of things last year if I've understood correctly. I don't think that The Mat Exchange won anything but that doesn't surprise me. We're a humble, low-key but essential service provider. Without us the War on Dirt will remain unwon. I think that you get hundreds and hundreds of people at the actual awards ceremony but last night was a much smaller affair. I was there mixing with financial experts, media whiz-kids and leading exporters in the field of biotechnology as a guy who cleans dirty mats and drives a white van around Dubbo. I think we're a shoe-in for an award this year. Whatever happens my presence there last night might have been enough to get my photo in the freebie local paper Dubbo Photo News and possibly, just possibly in the not-freebie paper The Daily Liberal. I am concerned, of course, that appearing in a paper called The Daily Liberal will damage my hard-core Evangelical street cred. Still, it'll make a nice change to appear in a newspaper without the words "Laughing Stock of the Entire Nation" being used in the accompanying article.
It's rained a lot since we last wrote, but the country is still in the grip of a severe drought. You wouldn't know it though - everyone is perpetually positive and optimistic about the future.
We've had plenty of brushes with the local wildlife recently. Ruth lives in mortal fear of the mice that have been spotted around the centre, the wet weather has brought some of the spiders inside (a couple of days ago I saw a large spider that had the gall to rear up and show it's fangs when it felt threatened) and we've had an echidna in our garden. An echidna? "What's one of them?" you may ask, to which I reply "Look it up on Google you lazy so-and-so". But for those of you who don't know what Google is (even though you're looking at this page on the Internet) I basically tell you that it's a spiny anteater. They roll up into a ball when they don't like what's going on, so the photo below is of an inverted echidna. It's in a ball thinking "I'm nice and safe in here. Ha ha!" totally unaware that we've picked it up and turned it upside down to expose it's soft underbelly to my camera. You can see it's long snout and super deformed 'hands'. Isn't nature wonderful/really ugly?
Xanthe has started on solids and been feasting on butternut squash mixed with milk and baby rice. It looks disgusting and probably tastes even worse but she doesn't know any better so wolfs it all down. She doesn't have a clue! Hah! Once again I prove myself able to outsmart a five-month old baby.
We saw Spiderman 3 a few days ago. Although it wasn't the best of the trilogy it was still, ironically, about 300 times better than 300.
Well, hopefully things will get back to 'normal' now so the updates will be a bit more informative. Have a good week!
1 comment:
That creature looks really cool. Helen asked me what it was, and I said that one lived in our toilet in Guildford. She's not speaking to me at the minute.
Now that you have seen Spidey 3, what were your thoughts ? I loved the emo rebellious Peter Parker. I think Venom was underused, but like the way he died. I also thought Sandman turning good was a little unconvincing.
Helen is due on Friday. Soon I will have offspring. The consequences for planet Earth will be untold ;)
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