The Chronicles Of…

So we’re hoping to get a new house soon.
If by soon, you mean some time in the next couple of years. We hope.
Our architect (the father-in-law) says we’ll be moved in by Christmas. I’m less optimistic and assume it’ll be mid 2012.
Either way, we got emailed some (final?) plans this morning and I’m almost allowing myself to get excited…believing it might actually happen…

The project involves us selling our unit (pretty much done); some friends selling their unit (hopefully soon); us purchasing a lovely corner block property (pretty much done); renovating the existing house, so that our friends can move into it (nowhere near done); us building a new house on the back of the property and having our own little street frontage with shared backyard/vegetable gardens/BBQ area etc (waaaay down the track). It’s a vague attempt at living in long term community with close friends from church. Letting kids grow up together and seeing if we can all ‘play nice’ and share resources. A sort of middle-class commune.

In the meantime we’ll become wandering gypsies, roaming the southern suburbs of Sydney between temporary housing, until the property is ready. Hopefully this won’t end up all post-apocalyptic and we don’t have to fight any marauding gangs while we’re ‘on the road’.

…I just couldn’t be bothered – does that count as an excuse?

Life is fairly busy right now for me. Loads of family related stuff happening; we’re trying to sell our place; potentially buy/build a new place; find a place to live in the interim 12 (or so) months that will take; work is fairly full on; and I’ve been a bit unwell also (although I think the unwell thing is just a symptom of all the other stuff going on, which has limited my sleep… never a good recipe). I’ve been trying to keep my physical activity up (running etc), but even that has been intermittent.

In any case, Twitter/Facebook have been the limit of my online activity – which appears to be more than the other guys have been doing! Obviously our lives are all going through a hectic patch.

A side-effect of all this rushing about has been that my ‘matters of faith’ have certainly suffered. My work roster has meant I haven’t been to church in weeks, and I haven’t really made up for that anywhere else. When I should be relying on Christ, I’m actually wandering off looking for my own big pile of resources that are “certain to get me through this rough patch”. The results have been fairly predictable: I’m short tempered; constantly tired (sleeping poorly); highly stressed; and generally fairly unpleasant to be around.

I know some of the tools and strategies that would correct (at least some of) this behaviour, but being told what to do just makes me more irritable.

Ok, enough whining from me. If you’re the praying type, I’d appreciate a few moments of your attention. If you’re the ‘giving advice’ type, I’d appreciate you saving it up for a moment when I’m less likely to snap.

I’m confused and annoyed.

We’re about to have a Federal election, and I honestly have no idea who to vote for. Both of the major parties are fairly disappointing to say the least, and the smaller parties have been getting on my nerves for a while now as well. I don’t want to make some statement like “all pollies are liars, so what does it matter who you vote for anyway”, but at the moment I feel a bit like that.

Labor started out so strong in 2007, and I actually felt like there was a bit of hope after the Evil Empire had been defeated. But how was I to know that we were actually only at a bit of an ‘Empire Strikes Back’ moment, where everything was about to come crashing down, and all that good work was being undone by internal conflict? I should have guessed, I suppose. The Unions were never going to stand for being shoved back into the industrial realm, and then we had Kev backpedalling on climate change, and the Peter Garrett roof insulation fiasco.

…and then we got our first female PM! Which was exciting, even if she wasn’t a smooth media (“moooodia?”) type. I’m all for substance over style, policies over personality, and statements over soundbytes, but you have to admit she’s a bit embarrassing. I mean, I suppose she’s representing a large portion of our community (tuck shop ladies in outer suburban primary schools?), but on the international stage..? Kev could speak Chinese (although sometimes it was just as hard to understand him when he spoke English), so at least he had something to work with when it came to regional powerhouses. I’m just worried that on her first overseas trip to somewhere in Asia, the local government will mistake her for that other red-headed female of Australian politics over the last few years, and think that we’ve finally voted in One Nation. We’ll be at war before she gets out of the airport.

And then we’ve got big Tony over on the other side of the fence. By all accounts (in last weekend’s Herald), he’s quite a nice bloke in person, and has friends from all sides of politics. But again, I’m not certain that I want him representing me. So far he seems to be doing his best to start up “The Australian John Howard Show” tribute act, which might be popular in some circles, but doesn’t fill me with confidence. The man lied repeatedly about fairly significant issues, and used those lies to build fear which in turn won elections (yay Australia!). I don’t want to vote Liberal just to ‘punish Labor’, if it means we get three more years of the Howard legacy.

The Greens seem to have a few things going well for them, but they’re not going to actually win, and giving them more seats will just mean Bob Brown gets even more smug. If smugness was radioactive, no one would ever be able to go to Tasmania again without all their hair falling out. Bob Brown has a halflife of about 200,000 years. It’s gotten to the point where I just cannot listen to him without screaming abuse at the radio/tv/internet. It wouldn’t matter if he was promising to give me bags of cash if I could just agree with him that the sky is blue, I would have to disagree out of sheer stubbornness. Which I recognise is why I’m also a massive hypocrite, and should never nominate for public office.

The Democrats were going to “keep the bastards honest”, then had the world’s most public domestic and killed each other off before they actually achieved very much at all. Thanks folks. At least Natasha Stott Despoja wore Doc Martin boots in parliament. That showed ‘em.

In any case, I live in a safe Liberal seat, so it’s not like my vote is going to actually mean all that much. I just like the idea that I’m participating in a genuinely important act by voting. Maybe I should just vote for one of the ‘little guys’, like the “Three Day Weekend Party”. That way I could be certain that some public funds would end up in the hands of a person who doesn’t really take the whole process too seriously… oh wait, hang on…

Why can’t we just have independant candidates, who say what they actually mean, and who genuinely want to help their nation, rather than set themselves up for a great superannuation plan? Is that really too much to ask? Really?

I keep catching myself muttering “world cup, world cup”. Brilliantly catchy.

You’re that guy… Who waits until just after Council Cleanup day, and then puts a load of rubbish out on the street, which you just know is going to stay there for months, because there’s no way the garbage collectors will pick that lot up.

I’m looking forward to the weekend. At this stage we’re going to the SCG to see the Swans, we’ve got a hotel in town booked, and it’s ANZAC day, so I should be able to wander down to the dawn service nice and early to get a decent spot.

I read this on the SMH website earlier, and was reminded again how frustrating the world can be. I’m trying hard to see this from the side of the people who were quoted in the article, but I’m just stuck…

”I purely blame police for it. He’s getting chased and that’s what young people do. They get scared and they take off,”

”You have to ask who’s responsible … in some part it’s the driver for doing the speeds he was doing, but mostly it comes down to the coppers … what good’s a stolen car?”

“One stolen car. He didn’t murder anybody at the time, you know, but that’s what it led him to because of the police chase.”

“People have really got to get the message out, police have got to stop this.

“Obviously you run from the police because you don’t want to get caught.”

“They’re to blame, they’re to blame totally, I blame the police totally,” she said.

“Yes, Justin may have a little bit to do with it but … you know.”

I read those quotes and just get angrier with every one. Are the Police supposed to just stop every time a criminal decides that he/she doesn’t want to be held to account for their actions? If I go and hurt someone, and then decide that I’d much rather go and have a nice cup of coffee rather than face the consequences for my crime, will I be allowed to just leave?

It makes absolutely no sense to me.

Then again, I guess it could be some sort of explanation for God’s grace. I’m not sure that I’m clever enough to put all of these thoughts together, but it’s doing my head in at the moment.

I got a bit of help with my PC recently from a friendly geek, who showed me how to fix up my machine. I backed up all of my important data (music/videos/games…oh, and uni work etc) onto a brand new external hard drive, and was all excited that I’d be able to start a fresh installation of Windows.

I did the reinstall, which seemed to have gone well, and started reinstalling software and downloading Windows updates. I needed to restart the computer, which I did, then it died. Again.

It just repeatedly mentioned missing/corrupt System32 hal dll files and just wouldn’t work, even after I had looked up ‘fixes’ from the Microsoft website and tried everything that they suggested.

Boo.

So I’m currently in the process of spitting the dummy, and seriously trying to work out how to get together the money to just go and finally buy a MacBook. I’m so sick of talking about it, and just want to go and do it. But I had also decided that this was the year that I’d be financially responsible(ish) and not waste money… so although I really, really want to go and buy one, I think I’m going to have to live with the old laptop that Dicker gave me a few years ago (which I’m using to type this up now) for doing uni work etc.

So does anyone know how I change my iPhone over to sync with this machine, and if I manage to do it, will I be able to change again later if/when I eventually buy a new computer (the shiny new MacBook that’s calling to me like a siren)?

Google, here I come…

Well my holiday is coming to an end pretty soon, which means I was meant to have done a whole list of activities to start the year in a good way. Let’s see how I’ve done:

1. Get my car serviced / airconditioning fixed.
Took my car to the airconditioning guy this morning, who told me it would cost almost $700 to get it working again. I haven’t even come close to getting the car serviced.

2. Find out what happened with a guitar I tried to sell in 2008.
Went into the shop who were selling it for me, and they don’t have any record of it. They’re going to call me at some stage, so who knows. I know the guy who owns the business though, and he’s honest, just forgetful, so I should hear something eventually.

3. Teach Vanessa how to drive.
Not. One. Lesson. But it looks as though we may get access to a small automatic car soon, which belonged to her Nan. We’ll see.

4. Exercise every day.
Been for a few runs, done a few pushups. Nothing too spectacular. Been swimming once or twice, which was nice.

5. Read for fun.
Read a few books, which is good. Finally, I’ve achieved one of my goals…

6. Catch up on sleep.
Yep, at least I’ve done plenty of that.

7. See friends and be relaxed.
Ditto. (This is getting good, just ignore the first few).

8. Fix my computer.
Nope. Ok, I’m slowing down again.

9. Write some songs.
No, but I did play some guitar which sort of, kind of counts?

OK, that was my version of New Year’s Resolutions. How did you lot go?