marc.vic.max.elliot

Another week over and not a lot to show for it (not even a working Government!)

I eventually got down to Christchurch on Thursday and even then I had my doubts – when we flew in the cloud cover looked to be down to about 1,000 feet.  I’m not sure exactly what it was but we only descended into clear air about 20 seconds before we touched down!

On Saturday Vic and I did the whole democratic thing and voted in our national elections.  It was a nice day so we walked to our local polling booth which is about 30 minutes away and took Max for a play in the park on the way. We have had an MMP electoral system for the last fifteen years or so and yet again we have no clear winner on the night.  The two main parties were within a seat of each other and there will now be a month or so of bargaining and horse trading with the minor parties until one party or the other can form a majority coalition.  Oh joy……..

In other, more geeky, news I got Mac OSX running on a Dell laptop that I had at home.  It took about three days on and off but I now have it booting up normally with screen resolution and sound sorted out.  It looks really nice on a 1280×800 12.1” screen!  I’ll try soring out the network next (wired and wireless) and then look for some apps

The boys are well (nothing major to report) and we are getting some sleep so aren’t trying to kill each other

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I got around to buying a cheap webcam today so we can now send our moving image around the world The other reason I bought it was that during one of my many rebuilds I knackered the mic port on the shuttle……..oops.

I know, I know, it’s been more than a week and y’all probably expect me to say that nothing’s happened – not so!

The main thing is that in the last week we’ve had both the boys sleep right through for six of the seven nights!  The first night was last Friday and Elliot had been up almost all day so when it got to 19:30 he was absolutely shattered.  We put Max to bed at seven and Elliot at seven thirty and Max was the first to wake up at 06:30 while Elliot slept through to 07:30 – twelve hours!  Almost every night since they have slept through – the only exception being Tuesday (I think) Elliot sometimes won’t go to bed until 21:30 or so but once he’s down he’s OK until the morning.  The funny thing is that I felt better getting less sleep!

A funny thing happened the other day too.  My brother Jason and his wife Selena left for London over a year ago now so Max will have been about 18 months old at the time.  We were lying in bed the other day and he was trying to peel my tattoo off (as he does sometimes ) and I asked him who had drawn it – Uncle Jason he said after a slight hesitation which was quite cool.  Not only did he do that but two days ago he was having his first horsey ride on Daddy’s back and I thought I would teach him something of his family so asked who owned a horse.  Aunty ‘elena he said after a little while!  I guess we must have been talking about but we certainly hadn’t discussed it with him!  The boy’s a sponge!

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It’s been a while but I got out my D30 last night.  It’s so much more responsive than my digicam (which is 3 years newer!) and it was like visiting an old friend.

Here’s a couple of shots – D30, 100mm F2.8 macro, EX420 bounced off the ceiling.  My Mum says that all my photos are too dark – what do you guys see?  The joys of the net is that if my monitor is way out then they’ll look like crap to everyone else.

Well It’s 05:30am on a Saturday morning and my cab is about to pick me up 🙁

I’m off to Shanghai for Dell’s Asia-Pacific-Japan Technical Summit!  Three days travelling to attend a three day conference – I’m not sure it makes sense……..  Packing my suitcase was easy, packing my hand luggage much harder!  Laptop, phone, PDA, Ipod, Card Reader, cables, wallet, passport and tickets should just about do it

Have a great week everyone.

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We are still alive!

The last week or so has been crazy busy and between doing stuff and not bothering to do stuff I haven’t done stuff!

The weekend before last saw us fill up our weekend depressingly fast.  Saturday saw us driving two hours up the coast for the second birthday party of Abbey, daughter of our good friends Ali and Al.  Max now has discovered the joys of a full size trampoline and spent a huge part of the day climbing up a chair onto the tramp and bouncing madly then climbing back down (rinse and repeat……) Max spent loads of time following the “big boys” (four and six) around and due to this can now operate a water fountain well enough to get a couple of mouthfuls from it.

Sunday, and it was me and my Dad moving four cubic meters of premium topsoil to finish the filling of our raised garden.  This took a lot longer than expected and before I knew it it was halfway through the afternoon and I was collapsing on the couch.

The week? Well it’s the week, right?  Get up, feed Max while Vic sleeps, work all day, give Max his dinner, bath both the boys, put Max to bed, have dinner, watch a tiny bit of TV and go to bed in the knowledge that I’ll be awake at about 06:00.  Multiply that by five and you have my work week.

On the Saturday of the weekend just gone we had a lovely family morning out and drove into Wellington for the morning.  It was quite a nice morning and we had a walk around town, stopping for brunch at about 10:30 so that Vic could have Eggs Benedict.  She love EB but hasn’t had it for close to a year due to being pregnant and then just not going out much.  After I dropped everyone off home I then popped out to buy a nice shiny new 60GB colour iPod!  It is a very nice piece of kit and I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with it I also bought a Griffin iTrip so that I can transmit to my car stereo but also play music on the stereo in the family room.  I have 130 songs in the genre “Children’s Music” and Max had 90 minutes of random kiddies music this afternoon – great stuff!

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Max has a new word……. why?

Oh joy the first of many years full of “why?”