Last month

And what a party it was. The music finally finished at about 4am, not that we minded, because we slept through most of it. But having left the parking lights on the bus on for all that time, we found when I went to start the engine that the truck batteries were flat. It seems the trickle charger that was switched on was not actually charging them. So I had to  drag the 4 very heavy 6V house batteries out of the other side & connect them up in series to get it started. That worked, so I then had to get them back in again. For that part, I asked for some help, as the kids were back, breaking into one of the cars that had its keys locked inside. And there I was, thinking that someone had done the right thing & elected not to drive home while drunk.

Meanwhile, Julie had either used all of her smokes or dropped the remaining packet somewhere overnight, & by this time, she was pretty cranky! So I elected to get moving ASAP & we bought her some relief at Canowindra (can-ow-ndra). So of course, the laptop that drives the TravelCam was not being charged & ran out of power (& stopped taking pictures) at about 12. Which was a pity, because it could have taken some rather interesting shots, as we drove into wind & rain on the way home. It was also rather eerie having no power, which also meant no water (the power runs the pump), so I couldn't even run clean water through the dunny to flush the black tank when I dumped it at Cowra. Even simple things like taking tablets had to be improvised, like washing them down with lemonade instead of water.

Got back about 3pm, put a very short awning out to cover the door & took only the essentials inside. When the rain cleared, I went out again & got the house batteries back in order.

Following weekend. I went back to work & Julie stayed home for the second half of her leave. So now we're just sitting here on a slow Sunday morning start, & I had a thought (yes, it did hurt). Ever since I upgraded to Windows 7 & installed Office 2007, as well as the 2000 version of FrontPage, the spell checker on these Newsletters has not been working. Of course, that's because when I reinstalled FrontPage, I omitted to reinstall the spell checker for 2000. I have now fixed that & have gone over all of the newsletters for the last 3 years & found an amazing number of errors.

Since then, we have struggled to deal with the consequences of our debt situation, with both of us showing signs of clinical depression. Our beloved doctor has since put us both back on anti-depressants, & a week later, we are both at least out of the slump, but still incredibly tired. We have also started looking for weekend jobs. Julie has applied at MacDonalds & Dominos, while I have just been through the second screening stage at Bunnings. I have actually put up the suggestion that when we are ready to escape, we sell the house here & head for Western Australia to get work in the mines, & pay off our debts quickly. We'll see how it pans out over the next year.

Meanwhile, everything else is just moving along. Angel & I have an unspoken agreement that she wakes me at night when she needs to go out & I usually stumble outside & have a pee with her. So maybe she did learn something while we were away after all. The picture of her this month is where she is catching flowers in the garden. The other pictures are from the last fly-over of Canberra by an F-111 before they are retired from service.

At work, it's now nearly 6 months since I took on the role of ECO Chief Warden & during that time, I have thrown a variety of exercises at the rest of the team. However, the most challenging one of all proved to be for me & the Command Team. When we put ourselves into a "genuine" false alarm situation, we discovered that our process of communicating the relevant details of the situation as it emerged had huge holes in it. Earlier this week, we conducted another test where we tried out 2 different scenarios, one where we call each floor point in turn & the other where we call all of them & simply announce the news (loudly). We were delighted when scenario 2 worked really well, so we now have a process where we have an alarm situation under control & waiting for the arrival of the Fire Brigade within 3-4 minutes. And if there is a real fire, we'll have the building almost evacuated before they even get there.

We had a visit from Eemeli, to collect some of his essential stuff like passport & return flight tickets, plus all those bits & pieces he had missed when he left. He is well & still living in Campbell.

The end of the week & I had my interview at Bunnings on Friday & should hear the result next week. If I'm through, then both days of next weekend will be taken up with induction. Meanwhile, Julie has an interview at Maccas today. Her regular job is STILL going through a massive transition & right now, she's saying that work isn't fun any more. We'll see how that pans out too. On the financial front, we have taken several rather large steps, including getting loans to pay out the credit cards & switching to a debit card instead. We have minimised all spending, Home Brand is looking really good & luxuries are few & far between. Update: Maccas were only able to offer a few hours a week on the weekends, as the younger kids get the weekend work. We called into Dominos to ask about Julie's online application & she got hired on the spot! She has her induction next weekend.

And the CMCA is running a photo competition each month on their forum. This month, the theme was "seniors" & my entry of the Swaggie at the Majors Creek Music Festival last year was the winner. Yay!