Oct 30, 2007

Another Crashing Return to Normal

Can't Eat, Talking Back to the old routine with beach, swimming, music, painting, brook etc the norm again.

Not much more to say than that really... except I took Eloise down to a Kite Festival on Sunday, regaling her with promises of seeing kites flying in the shapes of butterflies and whales and all sorts of fantastic shapes.

And her whoops of delight when my promises were fulfilled were most heartwarming. And, taking pity un us poor kiteless wretches, some kind people let us fly their kite for a little while. It only crashed and burned about six times.

Oct 26, 2007

Exploring

Caught Exploring Eloise deviated from the track at Mount Glorious to look at the leaves and indulge in a little produire d'eau au naturel.

Visa renewed

It has been two months since I submitted our paperwork for renewing the sponsorship visa and have finally heard that it has been approved. Lucky really as we have a five year lease on the motor. Neil and I caught the bus into the city this afternoon whilst Eloise was at nursery and spent a shorter than expected time queuing in the brand new offices of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to get out passports stamped. To our surprise we have been granted a four year visa as I had only asked for two years to cover us whilst the permanent residency is being processed in Adelaide. Hopefully this means they think we are worthy citizens and grant us residency without any further ado. Then off we toddled to get out medicare cards renewed. During our administrative afternoon we managed to sneak in coffee and cake at our regular coffee shop on Adelaide Street. After all, it is my day off.

Rainforests and Barbecues

Dad Shirley wasn't feeling too hot on Tuesday so we canned Mooloolaba.

We thought about going to Nudgee Beach in the morning then Maiala in the afternoon, but the tides weren't right so we switched around, then canned the beach anyway as we didn't feel it would come up to the exacting touristic standards our visitors might expect, and opted for a barbie down in the city by the river under Story Bridge.

The rainforest seemed to go down pretty well, as it's kind of a unique experience with an atmosphere you don't get in too many places what with the huge trees and gentle calm punctuated by exotic bird calls and a subtle all-pervasive insect buzz coming from some mystery direction.

We walked all the way down to a waterfall, which was actually a-trickling a little bit, surprisingly. I looked after Eloise so we were trailing behind most of the way but we had quite a jolly time.

Then we stopped off at a nice little restaurant in Mount Glorious and had a light lunch thingy on their veranda. A veranda incidentally which offers views down across the D'Aguilar Mountains and the Samford Valley across to Strathpine and Sandgate on Moreton Bay with Moreton Island in the distance.

Nicole's special barbecued kebabs were consumed with relish across the river from the gleaming towers as the sun went down underneath Story Bridge.

On Wednesday morning we took Eloise swimming, I in the pool with the little tinker, the others sipping coffee on the edge. She did quite well, but is developing a distressing reluctance to jump into the water. Instead she employs a safety-conscious turn around and climb gently into the water tactic unless her hands are being held. We'll have to work on that.

When Eloise went to bed I took Dad and Shirley off to a hotel. They had to leave for the airport at 3am and very kindly didn't wish to disturb our slumber at that hour. So I took them down to the Hacienda Hotel in Hamilton and said Adios to them.

And there, dear readers, ended the visit. I think they enjoyed it. They certainly liked Brisbane. Well who wouldn't.

So off they go to New Zealand. It was a bit hot for them here, I hope it isn't too cold for them there!

It was nice to see the old boy, and great that he could make it here. It's a long journey, no mistake, but one that's worth making.

So it was with a twinge of emotion that I pumped up the car stereo to 11 and high-tailed it home with hardcore acid-techno blaring. And got lost.

Oct 25, 2007

Miasma -> Marina

Marina I briefly got out of bed the next day for some supper.

Apparently they had been out to supper the previous night in Wilston, and that day they'd gone to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where they'd coincidentally bumped into Rachel and Gavin. Well they say it's just a big small town really.

Eloise had had a long day and no sleep and was climbing the walls, so the kind offer of a restaurant was declined and Nicole made a roast which with our oven took a long time to cook to an acceptable level of sterility. Still my veggie flan thingy was nice!

The next day, Monday if I'm right, was music day and I physically couldn't stay in bed any longer as my back was starting to sieze up and I'd finished my book.

In order not to overwhelm the music class with Eloise attendants we let Brendan and Shirley go duo and they seemed to get on fine.

In the afternoon they took Eloise out for a stroll and we went off to meet up with Rachel and Gavin at Manly as they were flying out the next day, which was a nice break for us. ABC Local Radio had a hilarious item on about unwanted house guests which we thought might be apropos to them as they'd been staying with Gavin's sister for two weeks.

We stopped off on the way back to pick up some kebabs as we'd decided to go up the coast the next day to Mooloolaba, and the traffic was ghastly on the way back with a big bushfire on the Gateway Motorway which was casting a great plume over the Eastern horizon.

Turned out Eloise hadn't woken up til 4 o'clock anyway and when we got back they were chatting to Peter from next door, who'd brought round my Lottery winnings.

Yes it's official I'm rich... but no begging letters please, I've spent it all already on coffee and cakes.

I'm buggered if I can remember what we did in the evening unless that was the night we went to the Nepalese restaurant...? Oh yeah, it was.

Oct 24, 2007

Tour Guides R Us

River and Road Last Friday - it seems like a long time ago - we dropped Eloise off at Nursery and had a mad dash around Mt Coot-tha with the mutts before setting off for the airport to pick up the old fella and Shirley.

We were a little late owing to the excellent new traffic lights at the airport whose purported safety function has the unfortunate side-effect off transforming even the mildest of traffic into grinding gridlock.

Oh, and we went to the wrong terminal section as I'd forgotten what airline they were flying on.

Anyway we found them without too much trouble and after dropping their caravan of baggage off at home, and conduting the tour of the house and grounds, went up to Mount Coot-tha for some lunch.

You'd think that they'd have changed what with us having been on the other side of the world for a year, but of course we've been video calling on a regular basis so we knew what they'd look like. It was probably nice for them to see us withouth the purple rinse that our webcam washes over us, but I shouldn't think they were too suprised either. I didn't get any comments on my golden bronze windsept outdoorsman complexion anyway.

Not for us the good old café though, it was made clear that we were to be treated at every opportunity, which was nice, and so we repaired to the mountain top restaurant to eat ourselves silly.

The aforementioned jacaranda trees got a good reception, your see I wasn't lying when I said they were very pretty, and they seemed to appreciate the general greenery of the exotic subtropical foliage and all that.

We picked up Eloise from nursery and the grandmotherly and grandfatherly cooing started in earnest, and presents were unwrapped to general acclaim and then early to bed as they'd had a long day.

A tentative itenerary had been discussed and we had various trips on the agenda. Day 1 was the city where we had an ambitious plan of walking up and down South Bank, going on CityCats and all that, and to be fair we accomplished a lot of it, but an en-masse excursion to the brook first thing ate into the time somewhat.

Still after Eloise had had her nap we set off into the city and parked down at the South Bank. I had a runny nose for a couple of days and unfortunately started feeling progressively iller and iller, and when called on to make decisions I was at best inconsistent.

So after the merest sniff of South Bank - no pagoda, no Branded Beach - we were on a Citycat and heading up river past the city and under the Story Bridge, and out past New Farm and back.

We stopped at Riverside and hopped off so we could walk across town, and my whole body had started to ache. I adopted that listless "I'm living partly in the spirit world and have chains around my ankles" walk and was half-talked into going home to my bed, where I was safely ensconced by six o'clock. I did not emerge for twenty four hours and then only briefly.

Oct 18, 2007

Spring

Jacaranda The Jacaranda trees are out in blossom just now, and very nice they look too. Brisbane is punctuated by their lilac blossoms along its roadsides and in its parks. It's very pretty at this time of year.

It's been quite hot, but cooling down for the last couple of days, no doubt in preparation to rain for Dad and Shirley's arrival tomorrow...

They are scheduled to arrive at 11.35am and we will pick them up from the airport around midday. Fingers crossed that their bags will fit in the car, eh?

Consequently Eloise and I today did a spot of housework, though we didn't get around to doing any dusting. Maybe we'll have a last minute panic tomorrow. Probably.

And yesterday we built a clothes-hanging-metal-thingy that Janice has let us have. Neil her husband took it apart and pointed out that attention would need to be paid to some little rubber grommits with the screws, but I was buggered if I could find them. Still it went together OK on the second attempt, with only a couple of pieces left over. As Leonard Nimoy said, true perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Eloise's toilet habits are progressing well. We are down to one or two wet nappies a day, after sleeping. Otherwise she is asking to go to the toilet and performing number ones three or four times a day.

Number twos are still being deposited in the garden. There's no hurry.

Today's catchphrase has been "What are you doing Neil." I calculate that, on average, she has been uttering said catchphrase once or twice a minute, taking sleep time into account, and given a six-thirty am start, by eight o'clock tonight I reckon 14*60*2=1680 times I've said "Practising the patience of a saint."

Spoke too soon

Recently I worked a long day on a Sunday and it was so quiet that the most exciting thing I did between 15:30 - 19:30 was heat a hot pack for someone. I prefer to be busy and generally find something else to do when we are quiet, but there are only so many times you can tidy the drug cupboard into correct alphabetical order.

This past week things have got busy again, in the allocation I have been working at any rate. Today I have done things I had never done before which has been really enjoyable. I have given fresh frozen plasma and cryoprecipitate whose clotting factors are deranged and I was involved in a clinical trial of transfusing mesenchymal stem cells to a lady with steroid refractory acute graft versus host disease of the gut. The mesenchymal stem cells repair muscle, tendon, cartilage and skin tissue so the hope is to repair the damage caused post transplant. I understand too little but am learning alot.

Oct 16, 2007

Looming

Misty Mountain There it is, as plain as day, looming over the horizon. The storm wot got us.

It was with us in an hour from when this photo was taken. And we didn't even notice it.

Our telly blew up last week and as a result we have had, well perhaps blissful isn't quite the right word, but a quiet time without Thomas the Bleeding Tank Engine on constantly. Also getting going in the morning is actually a lot easier without ABC Kids.

When the whole house-swap-suddenly-over thing was going on we ran into Janice down the brook and she offered us the use of some stuff that's sitting in her cellar.

This week we took her up on the offer to replace the telly with a smaller, less ostentatious number (less ostentatious being quite a challenge) and while we were at it, we relieved her of a double futon.

This is pretty important as what with the imminent arrival of the first parental visitors, they being Dad and Shirley, and imminent meaning this Friday, we need to sort out the sleeping arrangements.

We'd planned on forfeiting the marital boudoir and debunking to the spare room for to sleep on air mattresses procured for the purpose of camping, but the air mattresses have spruing leaks and a plan B was clearly necessary.

So now, armed with a double futon, we may well retain our own bed and Dad and Shirley can slum it on the futon.

I've just got to build the clothes-hanger-thingy.

Acts of human kindness

Last Thursday I was cycling home at break neck speed as Rachel and Gavin were sleeping over before the trip to Lamington National Park. Half way up Kedron Brook Road I heard a thump on the road and when I searched my bag my mobile phone was missing. I walked back down the road to find only my bike lock but no mobile. When I got home I called it from Neil's mobile - no answer. Well, that's the last I see of that then. I got on the phone to Telstra to cancel the SIM. Neil's phone rang and a lovely lady was calling from my phone which she had found on the street by the hospital. I drove down and collected and had to resrain myself from giving her a huge hug. How very charitable.

By complete contrast, this afternoon I was driving back from Eloise's music lesson and decided to pop into the library to collect a book I reserved for book club. I pulled into a space outside the library facing the oncoming traffic (this will become apparent why I am telling you this shortly). As I was getting Eloise out of the car the old boy parked in front of me got out and thanked me for blocking him in. I looked at the space between our cars and the one behind him and said he had plently of room. As I continued he told me that I wasn't allowed to park into the direction of oncoming traffic and pointed out how everyone else was parked in the correct direction. I just shrugged my shoulders and carried on. When Neil and I were studying for our driving licences I do not recall any such rules. He then said "what country do you come from anyway?". By this point I had had enough and ever the diplomat resorted to the lowest form of wit and replied "one where we park on the wrong side of the road apparantly". He had obviously had all his humour removed and didn't see the funny side and started shouting "scum bag" at me! I just grabbed Eloise by the hand and hot footed it into the library. Luckily for me he had managed to get out of the awfully tight spot I had left him in. What a charmer.

Oct 13, 2007

Déja Vu (of the Driving Down a Mountain in the Rain Variety)

Rainbow Yesterday we went up to the Lamington National Park with Rachel and Gavin for a day's bushwalking while Eloise was in nursery.

It took us a couple of hours to get there via Beenleigh and Canungra; the last leg up a winding country road, one-lane in places, reminiscent of the dreaded Mount Glorious road on which we famously came unstuck, quite literally, with disastrous results. Though, to be fair, not as steep.

It was a bright sunny day, although true to form the weather this week has been pretty bad, intermittently at least, with frequent thunderstorms rattling across the Gold Coast in particular... which is near where we were going.

The weather forecast said not to worry though and off we toddled.

We did the tree-top walk, which you'll remember consists of a wooden walkway suspended in the treetops, and a ladder which leads up into a very tall tree from which there are commanding views across the volcanic outriding ridges of the ancient Mount Warning.

Climbing up, my camera knocked against something and my lens cap went sailing down into the forest below. What a bummer.

So Gavin and I went down underneath and looked for it, and amazingly after ten minutes or so I found the runaway lens cap nestled in a rotting log. Result!

We retired back to the picnic area where needless to say Nicole embarked upon one of her gourmet barbecues. Rachel contributed a rather tasty potato salad, and all in all it was really tasty. The local birds thought so too and were raiding us for food; the little bastards were very pretty though, brightly colours parrots and suchlike things.

Our second walk of the day was down to Moran's Falls, and we drove down there a little tentatively as we'd noticed the sky was looking a little angry and grim over that way.

Sure enough as we got out of the car and set off, the odd rumble was making itself heard. We thought we'd make it down as far as we could then turn around, but soon the rumbles were getting really ominous and I was re-living the Mount Glorious experience, thinking hmmmm..... steep roads, winding corners, wet conditions....

So I called a halt after about ten minutes of walking and suggested that we might actually like to cut our losses and leg it.

As we were getting back to the car little splotched of rain were starting to fall, but nothing to worry about. To add atmosphere to our journey I opened my window and almost immediately there was a flash of lightning followed a few seconds later by a most excellent crack of thunder.

And then the heavens, as they say, opened.

Torrential is a word that is sometimes loosely used to describe rain that's probably only really heavy. This rain was torrential. Leaves were knocked out of trees by it.... branches were knocked out of trees by it. With windscreen wipers on full blast, we couldn't see where we were going.

We stopped.

After a while the rain started to let up, so we pressed on. A little further down the hill more cars were parked by the side of the road. They must have felt chicken because as we drove past they decided it was safe all of a sudden.... poor fools.

The second pulse of rain was stronger than the first if anything. Boughs of trees were lying in the road, which wasn't so much tarmac down here as a picturesque covering of green leaves. The rain was broken up by the rainforest canopy to become a fine mist, or at least a fine mist vaguely punctuated the torrent that ran down the windscreen like some designer water feature gone mad. The sides of the road here were white; we realised it was hail and started to count our blessings as we tentatively made our way down... if we'd been caught in the hail the car might have looked like it had been involved in a shoot-out...

Further down a tree had fallen over the road, with the base perched on the hillside, allowing us just enough room to drive the car underneath.

The rain let up after a while and the sun came out. Lovely rainbows. Ahhhh.

We stopped for a rest. I needed to relieve myself.

At Canungra we decided to look for a coffee shop. Gavin and I looked at the sky and saw how quickly the clouds were scudding across... and then we heard the thunder.

And so we set off again.

We saw branch lightning hit the ground by Mount Tamborine. Which was nice.

It took us four hours to get home... Eloise was in Nursery for nearly nine hours! Oooops!

Oct 10, 2007

More Visitors

Aspirational Myopia Rachel, Nicole's old pilates buddy and her husband Gavin are in town. His sister lives in Wynnum and they are here on a two-week holiday.

We met up with them the other day for a coffee and went to Urban Bites in Wilston for a decadent cuppa. I had a mysteriously-named Mochagatto which consisted of an espresso with a dollop of ice cream served with a jug of melted Belgian chocolate, which melted the ice cream as it was poured on.

Needless to say, as someone we know is visiting, soon the heavens opened and there was a cracking thunderstorm.

Yesterday again there was a thunderstorm, and today we had a thunderstorm. I blame Nicole personally.

We went swimming today for the first time after the school holidays. Eloise had a hoot trundling up and down the pool and doing her monkey-monkeys but when it came to jumping in and all that, she seems to have lost her bottle, preferring instead to climb in very cautiously. Hmmmm.

Oct 7, 2007

Binna Buggered

On a Bed of Leaves I phoned ahead to French Nicole and arranged to meet up with the happy snappers an hour late up at Binna Burra, and second time lucky we set off again, down into the city and alongside the river along the Riverside Expressway on a bright morning, singing along to various artists.

Eloise fell asleep after a while and soon I found ourselves in a traffic jam leading up to the theme park megaplex of the Gold Coast at Coomera. Eventually I rubbernecked with the rest of them at some poor benighted soul standing stunned by their trashed car in the fast lane with its side and a good portion of its front missing. But on the bright side we were almost instantly up to 110 again and forging ahead.

Soon we were running up that hill (Kate Bush) at sixty miles an hour (New Order) along the autobahn (Kraftwerk) looking at the big sky (Kate Bush again) with the invisible sun (Police) behind us somewhere.

We met up with French Nicole, Val and Geoff and wandered really very slowly around a little rainforest track. Eloise didn't actually have much to do with the slowness of the affair; the others had been at it since 9.30 and had made it around 400 metres around the track.

Still Eloise made it her business to investigate Nicole's baggage (I should point out that, as usual, we were seriously underequipped) and made off with her car keys, which had an amusing mouse attached to the key ring which vibrated when she pulled on a cord which emanated from its rear end. It had to be recovered by stealth.

After she started begging the others for food, I thought maybe it was time to go back to the car and get some lunch, and was surprised that a couple of hours had passed already. I'd spent most of my time keeping half and eye on the little terror and making sure she wasn't getting her mitts on anything dangerous (in the baggage) or getting her feet on anything dangerous (in the undergrowth). The others had been merrily tramping about taking pictures of god knows what.

Halfway back to the car Eloise decided she'd had enough of this really and did one of those lay down on the floor and withdraw co-operation acts.

Still after a couple of sandwiches and an orange and a packet of crisps she seemed to perk up, to the extent that she started to chase away the brush turkeys and magpies that had their beady eyes on our food.

When the others caught up we decided to go up and do a short circuit up by the coffee shop.

I used the pretext of "toilet" (hopefully implying a nappy change) to take the opportunity to relieve the enormous pressure my gastro-intestinal tract was under by this point.

My eyes were starting to bulge a little as we went into the gents to discover the throne occupied.

So we repaired to the disabled toilet to find a note on the door saying "Please knock before entering as the door doesn't close properly."

My eyes bulged further at the thought of me on the throne squeezing out a monster derek whilst Eloise opened the door and legged it down the corridor into the coffee shop. But there was nothing for it.

In the event, there was no event, and nappies were changed and pressure relieved without incident. And yes, it was a monster.

We went up to the walking track, but having been in the coffee shop, and knowing what coffee shops sell, Eloise was no longer interested in rainforests and refused to participate further. At which point we cut our losses and bailed out.

Eloise slept a bit on the way back home but when we got back around 4 o'clock we were both pretty tired. My bottom hurt (from the three hours of driving) and we still had to go and get dog food and offer technical support across the road.

By the time Nicole got back home at 7.30 or so and Eloise was in bed, I was absolutely buggered after my extremely long day.

The Crack of Dawn

Jellyfish Another photographic expedition today.

The rendezvous was at Binna Burra, a section of the Lamington National Park which sits atop the Northern slopes of the now-eroded supervolcano, Mt Warning, on the border of Queensland and New South Wales. At ten o'clock.

So in order to get the dogs walked and all that I had Nicole wake me up at 5.45am.

Ouch.

We went in to get Eloise up and found her on the big bed in her room, sound asleep, and dead to the world. A little prodding later and all she wanted was cuddles. There was some event or suggestion that kicked her into life after a while, but I can't remember what it was, I was on another planet.

We got to the beach around 7am which I didn't think was too bad considering. The tide was mostly in though, which was a bit annoying, and the heat was starting to build up a bit even that early in the morning. There were shoals of jellyfish stranded on the tideline.

Things were going according to plan until we went to the café for our habitual post-beach coffee and baby chino. They just took ages to turn up as a bunch of cyclists turned up just before us.

Personally I suspect that the café may not be the best oiled catering machine in the world. Still it's a nice place for a coffee.

We got home about 8.30. The neighbours we out on the street conflabbing away so we joined in for a bit. But time was getting tight so we hoofed it around 8.45, at which point half way to town I realised I still had my flip-flops, sorry jandals, sorry thongs on, which is not good rainforest gear considering the ticks and leeches and all.

So back again back again jiggety jig to get some trainers on.

Now seriously late.

Oct 5, 2007

A Winning Smile

A Winning Smile "I want it"
"I want this"
"It's mine"
"My fork"
"My spoon"
"My knife"
"My jellybaby"
"I want Playsicle"
"I want music on"
"I want CD"
"I want painting"
"I painting"
"I drawing"
"I want train"
"NEIL"
"Where are you"
"Where's Mummy"
"Where's Val"
"Where's Peter"
"Where's Alice"
"Where's Lexie"
"See Val?"
"See Alice?"
"Want to see Alice"
"Want to see Lexie"
"Walk dogs"
"Not bike"
"Not"
"No"
"I take picture"

It's enough to drive you insane. It has me.

Selective Hearing

Can't Hear You ....is being developed.

Oct 4, 2007

Sunset Over Brisbane River

Sunset Over the Botanical Gardens Nicole had the day off yesterday, but we were both quite tired so had a quiet day.

In the afternoon/evening we went down to the river in the city and toddled around. Eloise met a little boy and she and Nicole sat down and made friends with his mum while I wandered around and climbed the cliffs and all that jazz.

Climbing up the stairs I met a guy I know who works with the chap across the road. I might do some work for him putting a website together.

When I got back down Nicole and Eloise had exchanged phone numbers with their newfound friends and who knows maybe playdates will follow.

Eloise performed once more in a public toilet so the toilet training seems to be going well. She had another success for me today.

Oct 2, 2007

Eloise's recent successes

We have been persevering with the toilet training. This evening I received a text from Neil saying that Eloise had wee-ed on the toilet (not the potty). She received two stars. Yesterday she had a poo on the potty, but I noticed she had been walking with her cheeks clenched so I shoved the potty under her, which is cheating really, but she got a star anyhow.

Eloise can wink. It is a very deliberate concentrated wink. Neil is impressed as his first wink was at 8 years old after weeks of practising. She can also inherited the ability to raise an eyebrow from me.

She is also beoming quite cheeky/literal. We ask her something along the lines of "Do you want to have your nappy off or not?", usually after several attempts falling upon that well known childhood disease commonly known as selective hearing, and madam will reply "not". Most of the time we are unable to contain our laughter - we are doomed as parents!

She is becoming increasingly sociable and spends alot of her time sitting by the gate shouting for Alice/Peter/Val/Carol/Paul. I think she just thinks Neil and I are boring. Luckily the gate is very difficult to operate at the best of times otherwise she would disappear to see the neighbours all the time.

Oct 1, 2007

Back to the Old Routine

Sun Sea Sand With the departure of Chris, and Nicole's return to work, we have come back down to earth with a thud.

And it's the school holidays, meaning no swimming and no music. We have to make our own entertainment.

What a bummer. This means unpleasant things like going to the beach, walks down at the brook with the dogs, going to rainforests and all those unpalatable things like cooking, and napping and sneaking around the house while Mum is asleep during the day.

I have rebooted my repertoire of culinary favourites and we are back to stir-fries, lentils and haloumi. Which is nice, in a way. I haven't quite got back into the groove with the shopping though.

We've started to pay rent also, which is extremely painful to observe on the bank balance sheet. With our unusual spending patterns over the last few weeks, the jury's still out on how this will pan out.

Carol has lent Eloise some videos, and she's grown very attached to Thomas the Tank Engine. This particular video has stories interspersed with singalong songs performed by some school choir or other. If I hear "It's Thomas the Tank Engine/Hip Hip Hip Hip Hooray" one more time I'm going to... curse silently under my breath and wait for Squeaky to lose interest.

Now Nicole has finished nights, and I don't think she enjoyed them much. She's had worse-than-usual hayfever and one day her glands came up rather nastily. Though when mine did the same thing the next day we realised that maybe we've got something else. We have also had delicate tummies, today especially for me. So I've rested today.

Yesterday when Nicole had her bad guts she seemed inclined to feel that the best way to handle them was by doing housework in the morning and going to Bribie Island in the afternoon. We walked up the beach with the dogs as the heat of the day started to dissipate and Eloise borrowed someone's boogie board, though she didn't know quite what to do with it. Perhaps we should get her one and begin her transformation into a surf-chick.

The weather has been glorious, topping out between 28 and 30 degrees the last few days. Cloudless skies and all that. Very nice.