hiiiiiiiiiiiYA!!

I SPARRED tonight at karate!! It was so much fun!

Ok ok I spent the first half having the other guy (a white belt) (ie, the lowest) (actually, I'm the lowest because I don't even have a white belt yet) (next week) make mincemeat out of me and the second having a 15 yr old girl (in a purple belt ok) make mincemeat out of me. But it was very exciting.

I'm taking lessons with Tali out at Koondrook. 6pm Wednesdays. 5 bucks. Doug, a 65 yr old ex cop who showed me the bullet wound in his knee and where the bullet went in and came out. The men there have been really good for Tali.

(Oh, and I won at tennis last night - 4-6 6-5 6-2. I thought they had us at 1-3 in the 2nd, but we brought it back and won the tie-breaker, then shot out to 5-1 in the last set. It's so beautiful up here in the evenings playing tennis - the courts are set in a huge natural ampitheatre with tall trees on all sides of the footy ground and you can see an always-orange sunset light up the whole sky. Corallas (sp?) abound. They're pests, but you sure know you're in the country when a huge shrieking mob of the bastards come shooting past in the evening sunsetlight.)

Wish you were here.

Mountain Conquering On A Lazy Sunday Afternoon.

Tali and Ella and myself climbed to the top of this (note, entire photo appears in google reader. Website displays partial image.) today. Ok, we went around the back up the gully, but it was pretty cool. We saw a rotted wallaby carcass and some wicked looking gold and red spiders. Tali really liked climbing up and Tali-sized boulders he found, and both he and Ella could be heard to shout "On to the next challenge!!" as they clambered upwards through the boulder-strewn and overgrown bush.



We checked out this 22m grade 13 (it is visible as the left leading crack on the towards the right on the top image) and it looks really quite doable. Apparently there are rappel chains at the top which is good because I had a go at clambering up what I thought might have been the descent from these climbs but ended up being a scarily suddenly exposed handholdless ledge out in the middle of nowhere and I was staring down at my kids thinking "Uh oh, I'd really better not die out here because they'd never make it back and no-one knows we're up here time to go down now."

I think this may be top-ropable, or at least, we could climb this to start with then set up some top ropes then rap off att he end of the day.





Climbing anyone?

more iceland

Luce finally got his manager's manager's manager to okay his spending the rest of the year in Iceland, so that's a huge relief. Apparently his manager had to go and argue his case for him a bit - yay for managers who are on the side of good!!

And, while neither of our embryos took, and we've got the whole process to look forward to when we get back next year, on the bright side we don't need to worry about obstetrics and the like in Icleand, or whether I can fly while preggers. Aaaand we don't need to worry about whether being pregnant will affect my snowboarding in January on the way home... So, more living life now, which I am very focussed on enjoying.

Oh, and I learnt heaps in the 6 day stats course I just did, where the learning was finding out the maths and reasoning behind the stats tests I already know how to do, which means I feel very confident now in my statistical analyses, and am unlikely to forget it very soon. Yay again!

playing mario kart with the kids on my lunch break gives me a happy.

Yep, she's still cute

omg omg omg kittens are so cute!

And Pepper's the cutest:

Long weekends and red red wine...

Coming down to Melbie tonight to drop the kids off than see Dan and go to a rock festival at Philip Island then staying at Cowes overnight. And it's looking like I'm getting JJJ Day Monday off - so it's REALLY looking like I'm getting a beach holiday this year which very much excites me. Here's hoping I can get in at the PROM!!! Huzzah!! Huzzah!!

...also - Kate Miller Heidke (who's playing at Philip Island along with Bob Evans and TLE) is reeeeeally good. Was either bursting out laughing or bursting into tears on my first listen through. Subsequent listenings did not disappoint either.