RobandWend's Ramblings: April 2007

Gregs leaving bash

Party this weekend at our place...

To: Benita Dowding; Julie Mullings; Sally Amaglio; Gabriella Mowczan; Bruce Cuthbertson; Max Wilson; Ray Turner
Alan Dovey; Andrew Devereux; Andrew Hooper; Anne McKeon; Chris Brain; Colin Carpenter; Coral Godfrey; David Ng; Dean Plozza; Fiona Rossi; Gary Samuel; Gaye Taylor; Glenda Boxtel; Jamie Cowell; Jan Gilarski; Janet Grogan; Jason Greenwood; John O'Connor; Jon Dixon; Justin Greeves; Justin Maher; Kim Graham; Laurie Parmenter; Mark Robinson; Michael Reincastle; Premi Puppully; Richard Defonseka; Richard Inglis; Richard Martins; Robert Griffiths; Roger Kortas; Russell Christie; Russell Foreman; Russell Thomson; Steve Foster; Stuart Tootell; Anne McKeon; Coral Godfrey; Gaye Taylor; Glenda Boxtel; Janet Grogan; Pauline Willis; Trevor Nye; William Smits; Liam Roche; John Davies; Greg Godfrey; Alan Hastie; Peter Johnston; Tony Penders; Murray Pettit; Frank Sutton; Mitch Thomas; Peter Weston; Karen Hudson; 'robndug@bigpond.net.au'; 'Sava Sanic'; 'figgo'; 'Wendy Griffiths'

PARTY TIME

As you may know, after 24 years at the West, Greg Taylor is leaving the West in just two weeks time - on the 10^th of May.

For those who don’t know - Greg and Kaye are moving East to start up their own business.

To give us a chance to say our farewells we’re holding a party for them on Saturday 28^th (Next Saturday)

Here are the details:

Location: [our address]

When: 28^th April 2007

At: 3:30PM

Bring: Yourself, partner and kids, drinks

Food: We’ll put on lots of nibbles, rolls, salad etc. the Bar-B will be lit, so feel free to bring along some meat.

Please: If you’re coming… RSVP by Wednesday 25th – I really need an idea of how many will be there.

Cookie

IMG_3987
Originally uploaded by robandwend.

Cookie has missed out on the blog of late - what with all the photos of Bingley. So here he is - still with us.

He's really now R's cat, as she feeds him (freshly cooked chicken every morning) and he's with R & M more than us. Infact we can go for days without seeing him.

He's still as badly behaved as ever, although the house is a lot more prepared for him these days (everything breakable is either behind glass, or tied down.

Another new watch

I was delighted last night to get another watch as a suprise from W. It's not my birthday, or our anniversary, so either she's feeling guilty - or I'm just plain lucky - I suspect the latter :-)

Liver

W had a health check thanks to her work. Unfortunately it's shown some strange results with her liver. The actual problem could be a whole host of things, ranging from a heart attack to major over-excercising (unlikely). So she's scheduled for a heap more blood tests and a scan this Friday.

Fingers crossed it's just a miss-reading. However she has been feeling very tired lately.

Light-o-rama test

Here's the first testing of half of my Light-o-rama setup. 16 channels of lights, setup still in their boxes.

Visual profiling

This is fun...

Easter weekend

Back at work after a long easter weekend. Poor W has lots of homework to do for the Engineering courses she's taking for work. Thankfully these are the last ones, and after July she'll be free to be as lazy as me again.

I spent much of the weekend working on the Christmas light controllers, which are now effectively finished - but totally untested. We did manage to fit in a couple of nice walks by the river with Bingley. Since gettign him we've found a lot of nice walks close by.

We're booked for another two trip with the 4wd club - plus a social evening (Mongolian I think). One of the trip is 4 days volunteering for the Dept of Environment and Conservation - helping fix up an old cattle station. Of course two of those days are the driving too / from. It will be our 1st chance to try out the camping gear.

After the day trip to Wedge Island we realised we'd have a struggle fitting everything in for a longer trip - the boot was virtually full, and that was just for one day! - So we've got a roof rack (or rather roof bars) to give us some more storage area.

M has just bought a new car. He's somehow managed to keep using his Magna for eight years without having it services once, and not really doing any maintenance on it himself. You can imagine how bad it sounded - W and I avoided ever going in it, simply because it didn't sound or look safe. They don't have car M.O.T's here - otherwise it would have been off the road a long time ago. Anyway, he's bought a ncie new X-Trail, and tried to get a trade in on the Magna. The mechanic took one look at it, and told him he couldn't let him drive home in it, because it was so unsafe (he said he expected the wheels to fall off any moment). So all he got was scrap value. Hopefully he'll look after this car a bit better.

We really miss daylight saving - once again it starts getting dark almost as soon as I get home. Bingleys not too pleased, he's always being walked in the dark.

Chrismas light controller box 1 - construction

Chrismas light controller box 1 - construction
Originally uploaded by robandwend.

Here's some photos of the 1st set of light controllers which I've just finished. Actually it still needs the main power leads connecting, but it's very close now.

I've been off with flu today - keep having hot and cold flushes, but for the brief periods I've felt OK, I've been working on this in the back garden.