Dandillian II

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT! due to being completely INUNDATED with e-mails, comments, phone calls and hate mail, i have decided to forge ahead with dandillian blog. it may not be hilarious, it may not be of any interest to you in particular and it may make me look like i have an incredibly dull life but i've grown a tad fond of it. facebook certainly is addictive but i found posting a pile of pics for everyone to see and comment on is a bit crude and impersonal in an odd way. strangely enough, it seems i'm reverting to an old-fashioned technique of communicating. next i shall send you all parchments, written with my feathered ink pen and sealed with a drop of wax.

i won't bore you with a thesis on what's been happening in my life over the last 4 months. pics can be located on facebook and if you haven't signed up for it yet, you're probably getting a whole lot more work done than the rest of us. you're not getting off scot-free though, i shall briefly touch on our most recent venture, in which we spent christmas/NY in sydney with the family (without my brother and his wife who were busy circling the globe with their newly acquired cambridge-educated, martini-drinking, air-sniffing dog).

no blog is complete without at least one pic of my niece and/or nephew. and the ferret surrounded by empty beer bottles.

mieke and grandad. shortly after this was taken, she discovered grandads' ears made an irritating, high-pitched squealing noise when she put her hands over his ears thanks to his new hearing aids. he was patient. to a point.

the fairhurst, stein and dawson men.

the ferret that got the cream.

i don't pretend to be a good tourist and the blue mountains were no exception. maybe it was the bucket of wine i drank the night before or lack of sleep due to having to get up for the breakfast part of our bed 'n' breakfast.

but c'mon, they're mountains and they're blue. not rocket surgery.

and therein lie my tales of christmas/NY in sydney. fab time had by all but glad, as always, to get home.

our lovely scottish friend, phyllis day-night, organised for us all to go on a boat-ride up the yarra on the first saturday of the year. boat-ride is a term used loosely; it was more of a beer-swilling, BBQ-eating, wind-in-your-hair kind of extravaganza. as entertaining as it was to watch phylis doing an ice, ice baby rap performance, the only downside was the 80's music. bit embarrassing, but i guess that's what you get for hanging out with a bunch of 40+'s. must get some younger friends. either that, or we do the boat thing at night next time. oh, and it was 42 degrees celsius but luckily this is where the beer-swilling came into action and saved the day.

the lovely yarra.

a bit close and a bit shiny. it was 42 degrees.