Grumble grumble moan moan

Howdy. Apologies for the lack of updates. I haven't been deliberately ignoring my duties as blogger, I've actually been unable to post one all through the weekend because for some reason the phone line in our house has started "playing silly buggers", which is an expression in this part of the world which means what you think it means. Since Friday, you can only get the engaged signal when you ring our place, and there's no dial tone on our phones. The ADSL connection is also affected as you might guess.

So I'm writing this one in a cheeky moment at work. Shhh.

When I rang Telstra to notify them of the problem on Friday night from my mobile phone, at a charge of roughly $45 million per minute (but hey - billing only charged to the second so you only pay for what you use!), the nice man on the other end of the line proceeded to ask me what the weather was like where I was, and if it was raining, because he was still in the city and was just considering how comfortable his drive home would be that evening.

Man, was I in the mood for chatting about the weather, all the while calculating in my head that the amount my mobile phone bill grew during the extended, unnecessary breaths he took between the phrases "Hmmm...that's a shame, I was thinking of doing a spot of" and "fishing this weekend", I possibly could have bought a new house with a new phone line in it. I will seriously consider this next time.

So anyway, they're sending someone round tomorrow (Wednesday) night to have a look at our wiring and stuff.

Here's a quick rundown on our weekend. It will probably sound remarkably like our previous weekends. Friday night Mrs M fell asleep on the couch with her ever-expanding, person-filled tummy resting happily on the ottoman next to the couch. I played with my new computer and managed to set up the home recording-studio bit quite nicely. I've rambled on about my current nerddome enough lately so let's leave it there. Saturday we AGAIN went to Ikea to get the bookcase thing which we couldn't decide about last time. Mr Murphy (of Murphy's Law fame) was clearly way ahead of us though, and the white one we wanted was always going to be the one which they'd run out of. So we trundled back out, armed with about 11 of the $1 Ikea hotdogs for me to have for lunch. Unfortunately, they probably weren't worth the risk for Mrs M, what with the Listeria thing and all.

Saturday night we went round to Mrs M's Mum & Dad's place for a bit of a farewell thing for Mrs M's brother's fiance, who is moving to Sydney next week for work. They both are, actually, but she's got to go a couple of months earlier because her job there has to start right away and his job here requires a bit more notice for some reason. We had the usual pasta feast, being an Italian family, and there was way too much food as usual too. It will be nice bringing up our little girl in this environment, with warm, fun family dinners where everyone's just relaxed and the kids can run amok. Mrs M's sister has two great kids (and a third on the way), and they have a ball, running around and playing and laughing without making the slightest nuisance of themselves. If we can raise our kids to be that happy we'll be doing well.

Sunday we kept going on our massive move-the-study job in preparation for the baby's room. Made good progress but still heaps to do. Sunday night we had my brother's family over. Now those kids are...energetic...let's just put it like that. ;) Nah it was cool, they're great, except when they go straight from having greasy chips to my beautiful foosball table that my Dad and I made and put their oily mitts all over it...

Ok, the boss has just walked in so I'd better post this. Fingers crossed we get some internet access at home soon.

cheers,
Macca