Special night

Last night I had a night to remember with my daughter, Child A. We went to the Gabba to see Collingwood play the Lions, and we just had a fantastic time together. I was showing her things about how football worked and she was soaking it up. We cheered the goals, we booed the opposition’s goals, we talked, we jumped up and down with excitement, we chanted for our team, and we laughed and laughed and laughed. It goes right up there with some of my favourite days, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

Cheerio!

Developing situation

No, I haven’t taken up the habit of home photograph developing (I prefer digital photography, it’s cheaper), and I don’t have any super interesting new work assignments. I do have snippets about work though. On Friday my fellow managers and i went up a mountain, and we didn’t come back down until we felt ready to improve ourselves (and as a consequence, no doubt, our results). The company has declared that this is our year of the people – admirable, but one that it is really hard to feel excited about unless they put their money where their mouths are. Well, lo and behold, that’s exactly what they did, right down to the part where they are going to fund personal developement and business coaching for all of us, to help us more clearly set our professional AND PERSONAL goals. This stuff does not come cheap, and I for one am really looking forward to it. Should be great. For the record, we came down the mountain late on Saturday, and I was home by 6pm.

Beloved K is battling along, trying to keep up with a really hectic life schedule. Kids A and S are doing well, and also keeping a fairly hectic schedule. Hoping to make their Auskick session again tomorrow, but I’ll have to see how it pans out.

Other than that, looking forward to Nicki coming to visit. Have told the kids and they think that’s pretty cool. Weather is turning quite cool, especially at night (down to 10 degrees – brrrrrr!) so that should suit Nicki nicely. Still getting nice 25 degree days though, even when it rains.

Sent an email to Brother Joe the other day. I thought I was being thought-provoking…..obviously not!

Budget shmudget

I love Federal Budgets. This wouls sound like a very silly statement to most people, but I enjoyed myself immensely in the couple of days lead-up to this year’s national cash splash. The msot fun I had was pointing out to my younger (and some older) co-workers that I loved the budget “because it is when the government takes money from people like you and gives it to people like me”. This didn’t quite prove correct this time around, but hey…..it’s an election year. The Feds still have plenty of time to re-woo the “families with children” votes. Can’t wait.

Made another highly-enjoyable investment in quality family time on Wednesday. I took half of the afternoon off and raced home, managing to catch the last half hour of Child A and Child S’s Auskick session. I saw Child A score a run in AFL baseball (trust me, it works) and I helped Child S by trading a few short-distance handballs with him during a “parents help” exercise. Child A looked resplendant in her black and white vertical stripes (I have been accused of child endangerment but I’ve reassured people it is character-building – just look at me!). Child S enjoyed the small handballs for about 20 seconds, then had much more fun trying to punch the ball as far as he possibly could, even if the wind-up could be seen from miles away!

No news on the work front. I hear a few whispers here and there, but I’ve become excited about such things before and all it does is wind me up, take a lot of energy, and then turn out to be nothing. It’s not that I won’t be excited when things do happen, I just don’t have the energy to waste on excitement that’s not the real thing.

NOTE FOR NICKI: Keep an eye out for a package today….Express Post.

NOTE FOR JURY: Study-free environment is going just lovely, thanks (note time spent with kids…..good thing). Catch up with you tomorrow morning?

NOTE FOR BROTHER JOE: I’ve got nothing. How are you? Must get my hands on the Missy Higgins album…..no, the first one. Any suggestions?

NOTE FOR SIL….K: Do you need anything from the shops before I come home?

 NOTE FOR OTHERS: Yeah……like there’s others.

Cheerio!

Public holidays

Public holidays are the strangest of beasts for me. Most people have the day off, enjoy a long weekend (or a short week) and generally seem to get quite a deal of mental welbeing out of the whole thing. I work on public holidays and get extra annual leave instead. Sure, I don’t exoect sympathy on that score – taking five weeks holidays at Christmas and still having some in stock is pretty cool – but sometimes I wonder if I feel more busnt out as a result. I could, in theory, take very public holiday as annual leave, but then that would seem a waste of good holiday time.

We (the family we) are hoping to get away at Queens Birthday Weekend time. We haven’t found a location yet, but hopedully it will be somewhere relaxing where we can just be outselves, and most importantly be ourselves with each other. We have found precious little time for that recently and it’s not an enjoyable feeling.

The weekend just gone (still going for some) was really nice. I spent time at home, no study to do, had conversations with my beloved, went to the park with the kids a couple of times, really relaxed. This is something I just HAVE to find more time for. I think it’s good for all of us, and certainly seems to have a good effect on that feeling of pressure.

Cheerio!

That’s a relief

The gnawing worry I have carried in my stomach for the last few days has just about gone. Results for my exam and assignment came in this morning, and I passed both. Tat for me! Marks were not fantastic (that is, not as good as for the first assignment in the unit), but I couldn’t give a hoot about that really. A pass is a pass is a pass, and I’ll take it! Nwext unit won’t start for a month or thereabouts, but hopefully they will release the reading for it in the next week or so (yes Nicki….your advice is as good now as it was when I was at uni first time!). Once again, my lazy study habits have both caused me stress and been unfortunately vindicated by the results. The lesson from that? Dunno…..they must teach that in a different unit.

Attention

Call it paying attention, call it needing attention (OK craving), but I want attention! Why? Probalby because I feel guilty over paying no attention to a few things because of the work/study conundrum.

My assignment (last for the subject) was largely ground out over last weekend, starting on Friday night, taking all day and half the night on Saturday and finishing 6pm Sunday. Suffice to say I owe plenty of other people more attention than I deserve. I found the assignment really tough, and even though It means my Business Accounting and Finance unit it over, I find myself having nagging thoughts (several times a day at least) that I might not have passed it. This is not like me, as I usually have the “why worry over things that won’t be changed by all the worry in the world” approach to things. Anyway, there is nothing I can do about it, so I’ll just have to wait patiently (!) for the results.

Work is getting us down at the moment. When I say “us”, I mean the family “us”. It is just so hard to get home at a reasonable hour at the moment, and that is starting to drag badly. Tried to organise a surprise weekend away this week (Labor Day weekend) but, even though I could get the Monday off, nothing else fitted in so it didn’t really work. I guess I’ll try again around the Queen’s Birthday weekend.  In the meantime I’ll just have to create what time I can. Trouble is I’m carrying more responsibility at work. Other managers have been sick/away/training/leaving/just not there all the time, and so people have been looking to me for solutions. That is a symptom of something good – that I’m seen as a go-t0 person to an extent – but it wears you out a fair bit. It’s nice to be thought of that way, but it would be nice for things to return to “normal operations” for a while, even a week, instead of this constant barrage of left field things that we have at the moment.

The life-long scarring of my children appears to have almost completely taken shape now. I was greeted when I got home by both of them dressed up in their Collingwood gear, clutching footballs (real ones, not that rugby league crap). They are both signed up for Auskick and are really excited about it. Child A is even doing AFL in PE, with her first game coming up on Tuesday. Now if I only had 16 more children (Yay team!)……..

Thanks for the kind birthday wishes from so many (Nicki, Jury, B-Joe and Grandma). So far being 35 has been so busy that I haven’t had time mto reflect on what being 35 is like. I might have to get back to you on that one.

Sorry – I have to go now – real world is chiming in again and I have to get to head office (1 hour, 20-30 minutes drive) for the weekly meeting of managers. Back on the roundabout again. Still, it could be worse. We have a managers’ retreat (a Friday, overnight stay and most of Saturday) coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ll report back afterwards.

Cheerio!