(*) Thursday is this day

Take a look at my webpages. I've spent a bit of time totally refreshing and updating them lately. There's all sorts of stuff in there, if you take a good look around! Enjoy.

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Parent-Teacher night... I met with both the boys' school teachers yesterday evening. It's amazing that Joshs' in Year 5 already! They boys are going just great at school! Their academics are great, their socialisation is wonderful, and Alex's teacher described him as a delight! See? It's not just me who's wholly biased that they're great boys! Their school is in such an amazing setting. On the outskirts of our rural town, the main playground is a huge open paddock. It's within sight of Pit Straight at the Mt Panorama racetrack! There are 6+ cows looking thru the fence at you with their big damp brown eyes as you walk about out there! There's a huge old gum tree leaning up against the far-end single-wire fence - it's a very cool climate to go to school at! Much different to mine - a lot of my schooling was all grey concrete! At the moment, Josh's class is running a shop in their classroom - complete with tables and rows of priced groceries, 2 cash registers, packing table, a storeroom, and each of them has a budget to buy their groceries. Very cool way to learn life-skills using simple and fun role-play! Josh found himself an old electric cash register a few years ago (that kinda works...), so it's getting some use by a lot more kids at last. I decided to walk there and back yesterday (I still don't own a car, but this place is small enough to walk everywhere anyway), and travelled about 4 or 5 kms by the time I got back home... I walked into town afterwards - it's not all that far to their school! The colour of the hillsides and the sky as they changed colours with the setting western sun was awesome to watch - at times I just stood still mouth agape enjoying the changing scenery all about me. It's a very pretty place to live, even if it got a bit cool by the time I got back. But it's the same as anywhere you live - you get used to it and take the beauty of it for granted - until you stop, look and breathe.

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Body Clock... As I said the other day, I haven't been sleeping too well. But, now my body clocks' gone a bit spastic! The other night I was asleep by 9pm amazingly, yet I was wide awake at 3.30am! And this morning my eyes popped open and the brain started working at 4.25am! Argh! lol Oh well, I can rug-up out of the frosty air outside at that time of the day, slip on some quiet headphones, and write away!

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Inheritance and glasses...? My immediate family is really very small. There's just my three boys, mum, 1 brother, 1 auntie and 3 cousins - I mean, that's it! I was the youngest of my family, and most of 'em have all died off! I had a bizarre experience a few months' ago, when a great-Aunt in her late 90's passed away. Although I hadn't had too much to do with her over the previous 15-or-so years, my brother and I were amazed to hear we were both small benefactors of her estate thru her will! When the cheque for a few hundred dollars arrived, I felt very strange - this was all there was that was left of my Auntie! Apart from memories, of course (there's some good ones there too). Well, there was one thing I've desperately needed for about the past 3 years - a new pair of glasses! The old frames were starting to wear out, and I needed to have my eyes tested again - it'd been 9 years since the last one! My eyes haven't deteriorated that much at all (I'm shortsighted and wear glasses 24/7... well, expect when I'm in bed! lol), but it was the new frames that were the revelation! They feel so light compared to the old ones! These plastic lenses are very cool - I keep forgetting I'm wearing the things most of the time! Now my nose doesn't have a dent from the weight on it from my old glasses (kidding!). Well, that's what it feels like. When I put the old ones on, like when I snip the grass or whatever, they feel like I'm wearing iron goggles! Silly 'ol me! So, now everything I look at, I keep in the back of my mind my old aunt - she gave me my new glasses.

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Stargazing... Actually, now that I can actually see things at a distance a whole lot clearer (well, it sure feels like it!), I've been spending a bit of time checking out the nighttime heavens. Yeah - watching the stars! It's something I loved to do as a kid (I even used to have a small telescope - heaven knows whatever happened to that - I don't have it now! sob! lol). Braving the cooler evening air is a challenge - I don't stay out too long, believe me! - but the sky is so much clearer out here in the country than it ever was in the city (where I grew up). You can see heaps, just by letting your eyes adjust to the dark sky. There haven't been too many cloudy nights recently here - thanks, in part, to the 3-years drought we're in the grip of - D'oh! Besides, I've been hitting the local town library and picking up a few books on star watching (not astrology stuff!), which've helped me find the names of some of the clusters of starts and stuff out there. Hey, I think it's really interesting. You know, the sky is always there, but you just forget it's there - until you stop to look!

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Cyalayta

Mal :o)

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