anyresemblance

Keeping pace

I am wearing a pedometer today and while I have not reached the obsessiveness of a blogger of my acquaintance I have fast become a bore on the subject.  As I realised how sedentary the day had been I made the father of my children walk from my house up Heartbreak Hill to the parent teacher evening.  The parent teacher interviews were satisfyingly brief and well organised and we got positive feedback.  I enjoyed the walk back down more since as it was approaching dusk and people had their lights on enabling us to have a good nose at their interior decoration.  Plus I got to pass my 10,000 steps.  We all ate dinner at the local chinese restaurant which was surprisingly good and improved by their dad paying for dinner.  My daughter did try and persuade her dad that since the sick cat is hers, that he should take half responsibility for his medical bills.  "You could buy 3 new ones for that money" he retorted.  Quite.

Unmentionable in the supermarket aisles

We have invested more large sums of money in the health of our cat.  After last week's visit to the vet to deal with wounds sustained in fighting with the local mob boss of our new area, he then started showing more signs of unwellness.  A visit to the vet on Saturday revealed that his bladder was very distended and that he had a blockage caused by a build up of crystals at the tip of his penis.  Many hundreds of dollars later, he was anaethetised and flushed and made well again, albeit he now appears a bit threadbare with many shaved patches of fur.  My younger daughter did a bit of self censorship while we were out on Sunday.  We were in Hobbyco (a cornucopia of model trains and little bits of alpine grass to enhace your railway setting, jigsaw puzzles and general craftiness) and she asked me loudly "do you think they have managed to get all the crystals out of his", stopping herself as she reached the p-word, suddenly conscious of the impact this might have on the surrounding audience of spotty teenage boys and men in anoraks.

I, on the other hand, could only think about the referrals this blog would get by me writing the words in the same sentence.

Wobbly

The deluge is on.  It feels like it's been raining for forty days and forty nights.  I am fed up with hearty winter food so tonight we ate fennel, apple and walnut salad, chicken escalopes and a bowl of home made  mayonnaise with basil.  Yum.  I make mayonnaise in a bowl with a balloon whisk.  I don't like it much in a food processor.  It doesn't have that wobbliness that I so like. I have never had a problem with it curdling and am quite careless with my oil additions.  I think it's one of things that you can't show your fear to else it will turn on you.  Like home made custard.

I am sleep deprived from too much tour de france.  The tactics are so arcane to me but I find it soothing and I like to admire the scenery and the jargon.  Peloton indeed.

Estimate to complete

At one time in my career I used to conduct education sessions on project management.  One of the concepts we used to discuss was "estimate to complete", that is, how much effort, time and money was it going to take to finish a project.  Project Managers hate estimate to complete.  They are happy to spend time developing enormously complicated plans but then ask them to report how they are going they get all fidgety and shuffle around in their chairs.  And things are always 90% complete as they hate giving you bad news.  Well, I hate to tell you that my unpacking is 90% complete.  I am at that stage where I've stopped noticing the paintings stacked against the wall waiting for me to buy suitable hooks to hang them or the 20 deep pile of book cartons currently sitting on top of one of my two fridges (not we're not going kosher but the new place already had a fridge and there was room for my own which matches it in brushed stainless steel beauty - shows every fingerprint, of courswe - that I decided two might be advantageous, notwithstanding that there is no rhyme or reason as to what goes in which fridge).  Must set deadline for dealing with loose ends.

Housekeeping

I was talking to someone on the phone last night and recounting a rambling anecdote that I then realised I should be writing about here.   In my minimal defence, I have only had my internet connection working for the past 4 days.

What's happening chez anyresemblance?  We've moved down the hill.  The boxes are unpacked and the pain a distant memory.  The removal men were fine, they only chipped one thing but it's repairable and they worked very hard.  I've had to make the trip to Ikea for the obligatory additional piece of storage (Homebush since Moore Park has closed, apparently it was the world's smallest Ikea but having been to the one in Causeway Bay, HK, I doubt that greatly) and the associated glazed exhaustion that accompanies such an excursion. Of course, it is all sitting there still unassembled but an end is in sight.

I like the new house.  The traffic is a little bit noisy but it is good to feel more in the heart of things though one could scarcely call Rose Bay gritty inner city.  We have more space, bigger bedrooms, a fantastic storeroom that I am completely in love with and a small courtyard.  Younger daughter is 60 seconds walk from school and the supermarket 100 metres away is open until 9pm.

I am back at work today.  I've had a few interest interviews including with someone who it turns out was at university in Glasgow with me at the same time.  We had a good chat about how Australia is a teensy bit bland by comparison.  He told me when he first got here, people were always telling him he sounded angry, he would reply "I'm not angry, I'm passionate, I'm engaged".  I miss that kind of grittiness.

I am, of course, engaged in dispute with my former landlords about the return of my bond.  I'm not stressed about it since I am so clearly in the right but it is a bore nonetheless.

Poor old Misty got into a fight in the new neighbourhood last night.  He came home limping and I feared a reprise of this but the vet thinks it is just that he has so many bites his paw is sore.  He is in for observation.