jayneandmarty.com

Who can tell me whether there’s a place for instant messaging in our lives, and if so, how to use it?

The concept seems as if it’d work for family and friends - we’re all online at various times throughout the day and the idea of firing off a quick message instead of an email or a blog post (or phone call or SMS) has merit - but setting it all up seems ridiculously complicated.

My cornflakes packet research seems to indicate that if Kate has a Yahoo Messenger account and Rob has a Microsoft Messenger account and I have an iChat/AIM account none of us can chat to each other. Is that right?

The fact that I have to ask the question proves that it isn’t simple.

Had a great day snowboarding at Mt Buller with Jed, Iao, John, Justin and Damo on Saturday. Blue skies, good snow (for this early in the season) and very few people. We only had to wait once or twice on the lifts and the runs were pretty much empty compared to July or August.

It’s a rort that the lift company can charge full price ($92) for a lift ticket when only half the lifts were running but that’s the Australian snow resorts for you. They do it knowing that when the sky is blue you’re only going to remember the sun, the snow and the great time you had rather than the hole in your wallet. (I won’t say it’s worth it just in case they read this.)

More photos on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayneandmarty/sets/

Haven’t had much to write about this week: we’re both pretty busy at work and are just taking it easy at home in the evenings. I’m going snowboarding with the boys at Buller tomorrow (first time to the snow since our wedding in 04) and we hope to make it to Hayden’s mini golf party on Sunday. Other than that we’re both well. More sometime soon.

Actually it was on Friday (the 15th), but I’ve had no time to blog it this weekend. Some of the highlights of the last 12 months … we’ve:

• repainted the study, laundry and bedroom instead of going to Hotham for our 2nd wedding anniversary,
• pulled many, many things out of the garden (and we’re still going),
• started to restore the balcony (and we’re still going),
• cooked turmeric sausages (not recommended),
• had a tetanus jab rejected by a shonky cornflakes packet doctor,
• caught the Geelong Flyer to work and back every day,
• been with our friends Kate and Damian at their wedding in Milawa,
• bought some very heavy outdoor furniture and restored it,
• explored Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula,
• bought Matt’s ski boat, named it Muchacha and learnt how to wakeboard,
• hosted some great weekends with family and friends including Christmas and New Year’s Eve,
• been with Simon at his wedding to Bek,
• gone surfing (lots),
• gone to the beach (lots),
• farewelled Kate and Matt back up to Newcastle,
• discovered some great local wineries,
• sold our car and bought a new one,
• taught Max to bark on command,
• celebrated our engagement anniversary with a trip to Apollo Bay and walked a part of the Great Ocean Walk,
• sold the Wyndham Vale block of land we bought in 2005,
• taken Max for a trip on Corio Bay on Muchacha,
• ripped up our lower area of deck and replaced it with brick paving,
• watched Simon carve up the rally track for his 21st,
• started to restore Muchacha,
• drunk far too much wine,
• shared Dad’s 60th birthday with him and the family, and
• had a fantastic holiday in Far North Queensland.

Not bad.

We’re very happy here in Geelong but we both feel we’d like to get more involved locally, so over the next 12 months I think we’ll join a couple of clubs and try to ‘participate’ more.

P.S. Max still gets this excited when we go up the other end of the house ….

That was the day we moved in. He ran around like a crazy dog for about 20 minutes. (Some would say nothing’s changed)

We spent Saturday and Sunday of the long weekend finishing off the patio/paved/outdoor table and chairs area that we started in April (first post here, second post here).

On Saturday we hired a compactor to bed down the road base and sand that we’d already laid. We should have compacted the road base before laying the sand but we only found that out afterwards. Didn’t matter, no harm done, it was only 1/2 a metre of sand and it compacted nicely into the road base.

Then on Saturday arvo we had another metre of sand to move from the driveway (it had been there since before our holiday) and subsequently compact down, which I did with a hand-compactor that we either inherited from the previous owners or from Jayne’s Dad’s toolkit, as I’d never seen it before. It looks like it was made from two pieces of railway track and a gangland crowbar and it weighs about 20kg.

By Saturday evening I was hurting but I was determined to finish by COB Sunday.

On Sunday we slept in a bit, which didn’t help, but after two tedious hours of screeing off, as I think it’s called, we were ready to lay the bricks.

Look at that. Flat as a tack and ready for bricking.

We had two big, neatly-stacked piles of bricks reclaimed from elsewhere in the garden that I was sure would be enough to cover the area, so I reckoned I’d be done by 2pm and all set for a beer and a bit of Sunday afternoon footy.

Then we got to about here …

… and ran out of bricks. So we had to find some. It was hilarious: Jayne kept going off to the bottom of the garden and returning with dozens of the things and I was doing the same from the front garden. Most of them were being used for garden edging and we planned to replace those with redgum sleepers anyway but a good number came from a path and others were from a set of steps down the side of the house.

All was going well but by around 3pm we were sick of it. We still had around 1/4 of the area to complete and 10 hours of bending and lifting bricks was taking its toll on our early-to-mid-30s bodies. I probably sound like I’m having a whinge but I’m here to tell you that it’s Wednesday night now and I still can’t walk properly.

Anyway. We did it. We were almost as knackered as when we rode our bikes from Beechworth to Bright in one day (65km) but we did it.

To finish off we’ll fill the edges with 7mm gravel and plant nice leafy things around it. Then we can move the outdoor table and benches back onto it and have a barbie to celebrate.