Karen & Jenny's Easter 2001 Newsletter
Hi again, as I start this newsletter (early February) it's the peak of summer,
in other words it's damn hot and as humid as standing in a shower - the only
downside of this part of Australia. However as a rule this heat & humidity
last 6 - 8 weeks, so it's not as if it goes on forever. Last year we had only
about 4 days of this, so we kind of got used to a 
more
moderate climate. It's been a very dry summer, the rains came but did not persist,
leaving Jenny with no choice but to spend hours each week watering our young
trees in order to keep them alive until they are big enough to put down decent
roots. You Poms should send some of your surplus water over here some time,
along with some snow - both would be real welcome right now! Seems like global
warming means we get the heat, you get the cold & the rains.
Since I wrote that paragraph a month or so ago, little has changed
- it rained a bit on Friday night, we had about 8" in the space of a couple
of hours which caused flash floods everywhere, but next day all the flooding
had gone & the fields were almost dry - but flood damage everywhere of course,
I had one client near a creek whose computers went underwater, and a car in
the underground car park was invisible all but the top of the radio aerial.
Our little dam got washed away too, a large hole appeared by the side of the
concrete spillway, and much soil has washed downstream as well. I opened up
the sluices to lower the water level & stop the erosion, if the rain comes
back we'll lose the lot - not that the dam is important to us, it's just a nice
feature really.
My Web empire continues to grow, currently I'm looking after six
web sites, if you include the Bayside Hash House Harriers, whose pages are part
of my own site at present. Many people are still under the illusion that it's
really difficult to write Web pages, but it isn't at all hard. All the pages
I write are deliberately kept small & simple to cut down on loading times,
with the exception of the odd bit of graphics when the mood takes me.
Business took a sharp downturn in the first half year (Australian
financial years start 1st July), but this month (March) things are picking up
all of a sudden, our state election is over and the Labor government returned
with a huge majority, so things are clearly defined for the political future,
and as most of my clients are state funded, they know how they stand and can
start spending money again. We have a Federal election at some time this year,
hopefully we'll lose 
our
current Prime Miniature, John Howard, who has driven most small businesses to
near bankruptcy and condemned us to be form-fillers and unpaid tax collectors
- their implementation of GST, which came in 1 July last year (same as VAT)
means much more record keeping, and a ludicrously complex accounting system
for the tax, in order to allow the taxman to try to pick off the cash economy.
My Laura took a sudden turn for the worse, the day after I released
the last newsletter; she was in obvious distress, so she went to the vet yet
again.The vet said if she didn't have a major hip operation she'd have to be
put down there & then - I looked at Laura's big brown eyes, and it wasn't
a hard decision. She's had the diseased hip taken out (yes, she has no right
hip at all now!!), she walks without a limp now and has no pain - but she cannot
run far, and cannot jump. Lifting her up into the Landrover is not easy, but
she insists of course. She looks odd when she sits, though, as the leg with
no hip flops out alarmingly.
The
Land Rover is getting a little sick too, leaking oil and water in equal quantities.
I'm now 95% of the way through building a replacement engine, I've converted
the new engine to lead-free (hardened valve seats, modified timing advance/retard
rates) so that I can run it on cheaper fuel, and plan to do the transplant over
this Easter, as long as the weather has cooled down (it's the end of March as
I type this, 31°C, and 100% humidity - not the weather to work on an old
banger). I'm waiting for a few parts to arrive from England, then it should
be heaps better. This is the first time that I have worked on an engine for
many years - the last time was for my neice Debbie (who may be reading this
- hi Deb!) about 8 years ago - I just don't spend the time fiddling about with
cars that I used to
Chris has got the place he wanted at University, he's at Queenland
University, here in Brisbane, studying Information Technology of course. I suspect
he's going to do really well, as he's always had an aptitude for computer science,
so as long as he follows the instructions for assignments, & documents his
programs (which he hates doing) he will do well. He's just started a few weeks
ago, and likes it so far, unlike Richard's girlfriend. Chris is also tutoring
someone in Visual Basic for their school assignments, so he's earning a little
money doing something he likes.
Hello everyone,
As usual I am the last to add my bit to this letter. We are still busy at work.
Even more busy than before. There is light at the end of the tunnel though.
We should get back to regular busy in a couple of months.
In
the meantime the garden has been busily growing, the weeds in particular. It
has been too hot and humid to spend a lot of time out there dealing with them.
I am taking a week off at Easter and plan to attack the garden with gusto, weeding,
planting and repotting. My head gardener, my mum, will be here to help. I am
really looking forward to the break. Hope the weather is good gardening weather,
ie cool and sunny. A few plants have died in the last couple of months. Some
trees recently planted just could not cope with alternating heat waves and floods.
It is sad but I think it is better for them to die young and then I will plant
something more robust. The most outstanding part of the garden at the moment
is the marigolds, which are providing some brilliant yellow colour at the front
of the house. I would never have thought of planting them but a lady I work
with grows them and collected a lot of seed, some of which she passed on to
me.
Apart from working and gardening I have managed to read a few books. I read
several Patricia Cornwell, including her latest, which was pretty good. Now
I am reading Paula by Isabel Allende (sorry haven't checked the spelling). I
put off reading it as I thought it was going to be a sad book but it is not
really as sad as I thought and I am enjoying it. It is not a book to read fast
though so it is taking me a while. Yesterday I bought a three in one volume of Nicci French stories. I have read
one of the stories, The Memory Game, but have not read the other two, which
include Killing Me Softly. I discovered listening to Late Night Live that Nicci
French is not one person but a husband and wife team who write the stories together.
Killing Me Softly is also being made into a film. I would never have guessed
just from reading the Memory Game that it was written by two people, one of
whom was male. It seemed a very feminine story.
As you will gather from the rest of this newsletter, I am no longer the mother
of schoolchildren, but the mother of two adult children. It seems strange, and
quite relaxing in a way, no more parent-teacher evenings. Anyway I cannot afford
to relax too much - have things to do, places to go so adios.
Richard:
Hi I'm back again writing something for this thingo. After
successfully avoiding doing anything for the last one I haven't been so lucky
for this one. The largest recent occurrence is going back to uni after almost
4 months break. I went back 3 weeks ago. I'm only doing 3 subjects this semester
mainly because I'm finally doing Chemistry again from first year and it is
on at the same time as the other subject I wanted to do. As well as Chemistry
I'm also doing Food Hygiene studies which looks at commercial preparation
of food and minimising the risk of getting people sick (places like McDonalds
and Hans, the place that makes those sausages and meats and stuff like that)
so that should be interesting. I'm also doing Epidemiology and Statistics,
which seems to be teaching two different subjects in the "same subject" but
anyway, 
that's
looking at Epidemiology (the study of disease in humans, I'm not sure if anyone
knew that but I certainly didn't before the first lecture) and statistics, which
is fairly self-explanatory. I've actually managed to organise my timetable so
that I have Thursday and Friday off which is another bonus.
Um I cant really remember what's happened since last time. I went
to schoolies (for those of you who don't know its a holiday where all the students
who have finished year 12 go and celebrate in a big party kind of thing, this
is actually been the third time I have been, the first was my own and the later
two I've been asked to go to) again last September with my girlfriend Katie,
we stayed at Surfers Paradise with some of her friends who were all nice people
so it was a fun week. I didn't end up dying my hair as I have for the two times
before that.
Also during the end of year holidays I went to Tasmania. We went
down there for our cousin Lisa's wedding. It was pretty nice. The scenery down
there is pretty amazing, lots of farms and very little housing although you
get bored with sitting in the car as everything seems to be 3 hours to get to
this place and 4 hours to that. We did get to see Cradle Mountain, which was
quite nice with a large lake and then the actual mountain in the distance behind
it. It was very cold and quite barren compared to my expectations of it, I was
more expecting to see lush rainforesty plants and flowers and stuff, but now
I think about it that wouldn't make sense considering the harsh climate and
the number of months its all under snow. I also saw some of Hobart, which was
also very cold. It wasn't that cold for the latter part of the week where we
stayed, I actually found it almost hot.
Katie has started Information Technology at QUT this year
(same thing as Christopher but at a different uni) although she's only done
a few weeks of lectures she isn't sure she likes it so I suspect that she might
be changing at the end of the year, although she still might change her mind.
Chris:
Um well… where to start. I started uni a few weeks ago. I managed to get
an OP7, which got me into University of Queensland, for Information Technology.
We 
have
started some java programming which I find fairly easy. We are also learning
about the internet and word processing which obviously no IT student can do
because the whole reason they are doing the course is because they have never
seen a computer in their life before even if we are already doing programming
in another subject. Electrical physics and electronics has way too much physics
which I would rather forget in it, the electronics part is good and sort of
makes up for it.
In other news, nothing... Well almost nothing I did go to a friends 18th the
other week, and the major thing I got out of the experience was that 80's clothes
are very daggy and should be burnt, and that the drum machines (and synthesises)
which were used in so much 80's music which have since been chucked out could
have only been a good thing, they didn't even sound like real drums. But it
was a fun party.
And just maybe I might get my licence soonish… or maybe not.
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