Isaac on his first day of school

Isaac started school today, an event which he enjoyed, but which left him rather sapped of energy by the end of the day. Everything’s going so fast. It seems like only yesterday that he was a tiny baby popping out into the world for the first time.

After dropping him at school, I went into the city for a couple of meetings. The first one went smoothly, but the second one started off as a bit of a farce, as we tried in vain to get a telephone hook-up to a couple of guys in Sydney.

They can put man on the moon, but the human race hasn’t yet come up with a speakerphone which can work reliably. This one worked for about 30 seconds at a time, before the connection was lost and we’d get very loud feedback of some kind. It would work for even less time if anybody dared to move it to be closer to the person talking, since naturally the guys on the line couldn’t hear a word.

Every time the connection was lost, one of the guys would ring back, then put us on hold to get the other guy, which flooded the room with classical hold music. It took a laughable ten minutes or so before the chairperson decided it would be best to hear the guys’ contributions on another occasion. Ah well, a little office entertainment never hurt anyone.

The traditional airport goodbye photo

Alas, Iris went home to Israel today. *sniffle*

On Friday Iris and I set out for one last drive in the country before she departs, alas, for another country. We set off over the Westgate, and some time after Werribee, got off the freeway and started exploring. After rumbling along various obscure roads (some sealed and some unsealed, reminding me why it’s not a good idea to clean the car just before a country drive) we decided that heading to the nearby You Yangs would be a good idea.

After a few detours along some farm roads and through the town of Little River (cue a Greatest Hits Of The 70’s album) we found the entrance to the You Yangs park. From the signs it appeared that they wanted cash to enter, but the gate was up, the coin slot looked well and truly jammed and there was nobody about, so we drove on it. If any representatives of Parks Victoria are reading and would like to collect the fee (I think it was $6) then please drop me a line.

We drove up to the car park, a little way up the mountain, and got out to explore. It was surprisingly foggy, but warm at the same time. The signs indicated a walk up to Flinders Peak and back would take about 60 minutes in total - 40 minutes up, 20 minutes back. And despite the other signs warning of a steep climb, and lots and lots of steps, and scary bug-eyed monsters along the way (no, not really), we decided to do it.

It was certainly good exercise, and there were some spectacular views along the way. There were also an alarming number of blackened former-trees which had obviously been struck by lightning, and I was pretty pleased when most of the dark grey cloud that loomed over the mountain decided to blow away to somewhere else.

Making a nuisance of myself in the You Yangs

By the time we reached the top, and climbed the lookout tower to ummm look… out…, we were stuffed, but the view was worth it. We coasted down the mountain, and just as the signs predicted, it seemed to take half as long to get down, at least if you don’t count the few minutes we spent looking at an echidna that appeared along the way. It seemed to be nervous, and hid head-first under a rock.

We got back to the car and headed onwards to Geelong, where we got moderately lost on the way to meeting up with Geoff, Karen and family, some locals, for a bit of a barbecue in his backyard. It was very relaxing, and we spent a good few hours having a good few snags and a good few laughs as well, before heading along the freeway back to Melbourne.

On Monday I got a new mobile phone, a very cute Nokia 6210. It’s titchy. The old one wasn’t huge, but this is much smaller. I dread the day they make mobiles much smaller than this. People will start to lose them in pockets and body cavities. It’s taken me a few days of R-ing TFM, but I’m starting to figure out how to work all the neat and obscure features of it, and to get a decent score in Snake II. Shame they didn’t put Tetris on it though.

Thursday of course is Green Guide day, and in response to a very annoying article in last week’s Green Guide, I fired off a quick letter over the weekend. It was published today.

They actually printed it wrong. What I said was "I hadn’t heard about one of them", but I presume some subeditor was being a smarty and thought my grammar was bad and that I meant "I hadn’t heard about any of them". It wasn’t bad grammar, I meant exactly what I said.

Well, I finally did it. After several days of fiddling with my mobile phone antenna because it was playing up giving me a weak signal… well, today I actually snapped it off completely. D’oh! The weak signal turned into a non-existent signal. Time to go phone shopping I think.

Last night we rolled up to our local cinema, the Classic, to meet Josh and Cathy to see What Women Want. The Classic is very nice, but has never seemed very busy - in fact most Friday nights we’ve been along there it’s seemed… well, almost dead. Worryingly dead. So worryingly dead that we were beginning to wonder if it was actually profitable. I hope it is, because it’s very convenient to get to, it’s got really nice decor, and they show some interesting movies that are a bit different from the usual Hollywood dross.

But judging from last night’s throng, there’s no need to worry. The place was buzzing. Maybe it was the difference of being a Saturday night, I don’t know. Normally there’s hardly anybody about - this time there was an alarmingly long queue for both the tickets and snacks. It’s nice to know they’re doing okay after all. Perhaps they’re even raking money in. That’s good, it’s a nice place, they deserve it. The movie wasn’t bad either.

To my utter surprise, the plumber guy came. Turned out it was the non-cut-price guy my landlady talked to last year at one stage, then rejected because he sounded (to her) too expensive. Will she heed his advice to replace the shower? We’ll see.

This morning I got my new drivers licence. The woman at VicRoads said I’d have to wait until the old one expires before I take off the P plates. The most worrying thing is that the (three year) old licence picture looks almost identical to the new one.

After the fiasco of the amazing disappearing plumber on Saturday, I’m told a replacement plumber will be here at 11am tomorrow morning. Uh huh. Watch for updates on this one!

Iris spent most of the weekend packing up all her stuff. Alas, she is leaving at the end of the month - heading back to Israel. *sniffle*

My sister Susannah and Adrian got back from their honeymoon yesterday. They had a great time, despite what they claimed was the general awfulness of New Zealand radio stations. They opened all their wedding presents, which apparently will present some problems: they love the blender Iris and I picked out for them, but may be unable to fit it in the car with Adrian’s windsurfing gear! Susannah is lobbying for the windsurfing gear (and quite possibly Adrian too if he doesn’t fit) to be left behind.

I got my driver licence renewal notice from VicRoads. So after I cough up the money for my new licence, I’ll be able to take the P plates off the car! Woo hoo!

They predicted that Sunday would be a stinker of a day - no less than 43 degrees in the shade (that’s 109 for you people in the undeveloped world still using Fahrenheit). Thankfully it didn’t get much higher than 36. 36 is high enough, of course, but is much better than 43, I can tell you.

It makes me somewhat doubt the abilities of the weather forecasters though. On Sunday morning they were still claiming it would be 43, even though it was pretty obvious to the average idiot in the street that it wasn’t going to be that high. I’m sure they recently installed a multi-gazillion dollar supercomputer to do this stuff.

Did it do them any good? Apparently not. Maybe they should stick to forecasting with a pair of dice. Maybe us taxpayers who paid for the thing could use the supercomputer while they do? I wonder if you can play games on it?

On the other hand, they were pretty much accurate at predicting the temperature in Mildura, which got to 46 degrees. Makes me want to go get a cold drink just thinking about it.