Entries from January 2008 ↓

last day of hols today, and back to reality tomorrow… it’s been a great break, and i guess i’m pretty rested.  done a stack of reading, goofed around and chilled a lot.  just what you want out of a vacation.  this year is going to be a huge one for us, so i’m glad i got the space up front to recharge. 

been too busy relaxing to blog, and that will most likely remain the case for a few more days… :-) 

Stood up and stretched the other day here in our holiday unit, only to find that my progress was impeded by the ceiling fan. I can happily report that the Mythbusters are correct in busting the myth that a ceiling fan can lop off a head. My thumb is still in place, although a bit cut and bruised. I can also report that there is something quite wrong about having a jolly good stretch interrupted so violently like that. Very wrong.

i know i’m really into holiday mode when i get out some novels and get stuck into some fiction.  one week into the hols, and i’ve just wrapped up my 5th book and starting my 6th.  just finished patrick o’brian’s “the far side of the world” (part of the jack aubrey naval series), which was a pretty good read (consistent with the others in the series – i know baggas is a big fan too, so i might need to raid his library for more), except the ending which seemed to come rather abruptly and out of the blue.  it was a bit weird, actually.  i could see the pages running out (as i sat by the pool), wondering how on earth he was going to bring this to a fitting conclusion, when it just kind of ended…  it was a very unsatisfactory finish.  what is even more odder is that apparently they’re filming this particular volume as a follow-up to the “master and commander” movie (complete with russell crowe), and i’ll be interested to see what they do with the screenplay to finish it out properly. 

too lazy to get a photo up for you, but we enjoyed a fantastic walk along the kalbarri riverfront this evening, just as the sun set.  just love the light here at that time of evening… something really magic about and tranquil.  except for the crazy wind up here, absolute paradise. 

just discovered that my youngest one (8) has an amazing ability to solve sudoku puzzles…  wow!

so, here we are up in kalbarri enjoying a very fine break with lots of time by the pool, lots of reading (onto about my 5th book), and just being pretty cruisy.  also teaching our oldest kids to lose at cards…  :-)

and then, last night, around 1.30am, i awoke to something – wasn’t quite sure what it was that had woken me, but i’m lying their in a daze for a stretch before i begin to hear it… drip, drip, drip… in the room…  near me somewhere.

without wanting to wake nic, i’m poking around using the light from my phone to try and locate the noise and discover that we have a drip coming through the ceiling.  hmmm… that can’t be good.  thankfully, it’s about 4 inches to the side of the bed, so i quickly devise a plan involving an esky and a towel, and decide to go back to bed, but i find it hard to really crash out because i keep having recurring thoughts of the ceiling sagging and falling down.  i turn the air con off because i have a suspicion this could be the only offending source of the problem.

sure enough, that was the problem – the maintenance guy has been hard at work and thinks he has it sorted, but apparently a similar thing has happened on the other side of the resort. i’m not one who generally expects perfection, but i guess i didn’t expect to have my roof leak in a resort… hopefully this will be our sole adventure for the next week and a half… 

Well, all checked in after a lengthy day of travel. Pretty uneventful trip, which is generally the way you like it. We’ve had a few bad stories recently of folks who’ve had terrible accidents on country trips, so Nic was a bit nervous. For folks who don’t understand what country driving in Western Australia means, get a map out and get a feel for distances involved. It’s like nothing else on earth. So, in WA terms, Kalbarri isn’t really a big trip, but it’s long enough…

On the way to Kalbarri for a couple weeks – should be a great time of chilling in a quiet spot. Haven’t ever stayed up there – only usually pass through it, so this will be a first for us all.

“Ask her to wait a moment – I am almost done.”
- Carl Friedrich Gauss, when informed that his wife is dying

i find this one funny because it rings perhaps a little too true in our household! and doubly so if there’s a computer involved… :-)

(by the way, gauss was a very interesting mathematician… check out his wikipedia article here.)