Buried in books

We took this photo of Harrison as a memento after we came home from the Writers Festival.

Our house

Here are a few views from our house... They're taken from our balcony (sunset and Rottnest) and from our front door. We regularly see the colourful tops of kite surfers from our front door, and at night we can count the flashes of the Rottnest lighthouse from our dining room. On Australia Day we watched the City Beach fireworks from our balcony - close enough to smell and see the smoke.

City Beach sunset

I took Simon to dinner at Oceanus restaurant at City Beach on the 12th - to celebrate his native title book coming out, and also as an early Valentines Day dinner. It was a very hot night (and astonishingly, the restaurant isn't airconditioned!). All that glass directly facing the west, with the tables positioned for sunset viewing made for an uncomfortable dining experience. We did have a nice meal (the Asian influenced tasting plate we shared was lovely, Simon's steak was apparently great, but his dessert was simply scoops of a readily available brand of gelato, and mine was a bit uninspired).

Weather

I have Toowoomba, Brisbane and Perth weather on my iGoogle page...  so I can see if we’ve chosen the right place to live!  Over the last week it looks like Perth has begun its cool-down.  The overnight temperatures are usually lower than Toowoomba’s even if the maximum for the day is relatively high.  And it now takes quite a long time to warm up during the day.  For instance, right now it’s 21 degrees in Perth, and 29 in Toowoomba, and our overnight temp was 5 degrees lower than Toowoomba’s.

Writers Festival

The Writers Festival is on at UWA this weekend, as part of the Perth International Arts Festival.  Simon is away for a 4 day weekend (driving up to Kalbarri to check out places for us to stay in July), so I thought I’d take Harrison along on Sunday.  It’s the “family” day, so there are children’s book readings and actors doing fairytales.  Should be fun.

Best seller?

Simon’s native title book has sold almost 200 copies in the first month (which is about $24,000 worth). Pretty good for a “heavy” academic book.

On air again

Hooray - I'm at home and online! The Telstra guy came (6 hours late, but he did arrive), and found an apparently very simple problem which could have been fixed as far back as January 25th... It's so nice to make a call on the landline, and such a relief to fire up the laptop and find we're on the network.

Juno

We used some movie vouchers Simon got from a publisher the other night, while Marg babysat Harrison. There wasn't much of a choice at our closest Hoyts, so with some trepidation we decided to see Juno. The shorts had looked good, and it got great reviews, but somehow we didn't see how a movie about a sassy pregnant teenager could not end up being cringeworthy and predictable.



Juno turned out to be one of the best movies I've seen in quite a while. Loved the soundtrack, the script, the location, the cinematography... It managed to treat a wide range of diverse characters warmly. The highly strung Type-A personality would-be adoptive mum wasn't ridiculed in the script for her need to have a perfect life, the not-ready-for-fatherhood would-be adoptive dad got a sympathy vote despite some of his actions, the parents of the pregnant teen got much better than superficial treatment, the pregnant teen wasn't just a fast talking too cool for school chick....



Highly recommended.

Off air

We’re still off the air...  Our phone (and broadband) has been dead for 2 weeks, and isn’t likely to be fixed until at least Saturday.   Part of the problem (IMHO) is that Telstra owns the infrastructure, while AAPT provides our “service”.  Telstra won’t talk direct to me as I’m not their customer, but they have to identify and fix the fault.  So my communication goes via AAPT, and I’m sure gets muddled in the process.  Even getting a phone service when we moved was a lesson in telecommunications competition policy.  Optus point blank refused to give us a service because they had no control over how much Telstra would decide to charge them for line rental. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about the previous government’s decision to privatise all of Telstra, including the infrastructure... 

 

All this means that we can’t log in and check email at home, or pay bills online, or talk to friends or family easily (our house is in a bit of a mobile black hole, and unless you stand perfectly still in a particular spot with your right arm outstretched, your mobile connection drops out... plus of course, it’s expensive to talk to Qld on a mobile).

 

Return of the intrepid traveller

Simon had a week off to do some solo driving and camping (his favourite type of holiday). After to-ing and fro-ing about whether to drive north to Kalbarri and Exmouth to seek out good spots for us to holiday in July, or to escape the heat and go south, he decided Exmouth was too hot, and he would go south. He covered a good chunk of the south west – Margaret River, Pemberton, Augusta, Walpole, Denmark, Albany and the Stirling Ranges.

He did a very long driving day on Friday to get back early (he was expected on Saturday), stopping in at Bunbury to buy me a teeny tiny camera to thank me for letting him have this time off. I absolutely love it. It’s a Panasonic (like our other digital camera) except that whereas the other one looks and feels like a “real” camera and has a 10x optical zoom, this one will slip into a pocket or a small handbag and is easy to take out and about.

We went to Hillarys on Sunday morning for a swim (it was HOT!). We also went to Mel and Tim’s to meet their new puppy Coco on Sunday afternoon. H just LOVED the puppy. I think he totally exhausted her, as she’s only 6 weeks old and chasing a 3 year old around is hard work for her.

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Simon has another 2 days leave up his sleeve, so is thinking of taking a 4 day weekend. I’m wondering what kind of gadget I can wrangle out of him for that trip…. Better put my thinking cap on!