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Grand

Oscar is excited to have his Grandpa and Grandmama here. Let's hope he is excited enough to sleep to 6:30am. I am over waking up before 6am child!!!...

4 posts this week

genius

I will never get sick of this

2 posts this week

Luke and Joni Need a Home

http://lukeandjonineedahome.info/ Welcome, and thanks for dropping by! Joni and Luke are on the hunt for apartment #4. We have been thinking that the tough part about the whole process is this: rental applications don’t tell the story. Unless people know … Continue reading →

1 post this week

the dogcow goes moof!

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moof!

Today my workmate Matt brought along a bunch of mousemats he found in his garage. His Dad used to work for Apple back in the day and that glorious mousemat was the prize item amongst the gear he had accumulated.

Read more about Clarus the dogcow who goes moof!

1 post this week

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

We are two days overdue and still nothing. I am exhausted I have to say. Sleeping is pretty impossible at the moment, I am so uncomfortable. When I wake up in the morning everything aches so much from the struggle. I feel like I have gone ten rounds in a boxing match. I also have so much mucous in my nose and head that it is very hard to breathe. I have started snoring, sometimes I even wake myself up.

I guess though if this journey is teaching me anything it’s to wait patiently in trust and hope. I am trying to do this better.

2 posts this week

High jumping with hats

2 posts this week

Update

A lot of people have been asking me how the video went down so I thought I should share.

The teachers liked it and the students seemed to warm to it. I showed it at the beginning of the talk and the students looked like that couldn't figure out what to make of it for the first minute or so. But after that they started laughing a bit. Which is probably about as much as you can hope for from a high school group. High school doesn't generally make teenagers enthusiastic and excited about anything coming from the front.

At very least, it wasn't an major disaster, so I'm thankful for that.

1 post this week

movie etiquette

If you’ve read the last post, you know I went to see a movie yesterday afternoon. It was a mostly pleasant experience, and would have been more pleasant if the young teenage girls in the same row had stopped talking, rustling plastic bags, and using their mobile phones which lit up the area like a [...]

2 posts this week

Election

This election is so exciting. There is so much suspense. I love logging onto the AEC to see what’s changing. My favourite seat to watch is Denison. It just keeps flipping, one minute Andrew Wilkie is winning, the next he’s not, and then he is again. I’m hoping the bushwalker vote pulls through for him. But all the seats are like that. All so close and changing all the time. It’s better than any other cheap thrill. I wish we had hung parliaments all the time. If I was a TV producer I would make a TV show called hung parliament and it would have the best ratings in town.

Lesbian

Someone saw my facebook photo and thought I was gay. Hilarious.

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Election II

Well it was not like last election where we got up in the middle of the night to see the election results. It wasn’t until 10am that I remember that there was an election. But it looks like it might have suddenly got exciting! I think I need someone to explain…..

favourite election campaign moments

Some of my favourite moments in this election campaign have happened in just the last few days.

Andrew Zobel to Julia Gillard on Q&A on Monday night:

Best JG moment for me – unscripted and real!

And from Rooty Hill RSL tonight – a question from one of the undecided voters:

If there’s no action on climate change by 2011, can we have Kevin Rudd & Malcolm Turnbull back?

Picnic day and Fire Hygeine

Last weekend was a long weekend here in NT because it was picnic day. Keith and I actually did pack a picnic and head off on a great walk. Because of the rain there are lots of wild flowers out at the moment and we just walked through these amazing hills full of colour and had a picnic at the top of one of them, looking out over a huge pound enclosed by orange mountains. It was blowing a  gale but we still enjoyed our lunch. When we got near the end of the walk we had to completely strip off and swim a few metres to get to where we needed to go. There was still so much water in the river runing through the gorge we couldn’t get out any other way. It was pretty nippy and a challenge for Keith to keep our pack dry… but we managed. I was more worried about someone seeing us as there were a couple of other picnickers around making the most of picnic day. Fortunately, by the time we were stripping off, most of them had headed off home so our modesty was preserved.

We had a good lunch the day before as well. I had gone to church and brought a couple of my favourite people back to sit around with us for a bit and eat and chat. We sat around the fire with Margie, MK and our neighbour, Mallie, 3 wonderful strong aborginal woman. I’ve had a bit of a cold and a couple of times threw my tissues on the fire. I wasn’t doing it while our kangaroo and camel and date sausages were actually cooking. Nevertheless, MK decided she should gently inform me about fire hygeine, which she said us white fellas were pretty bad at. She said when we are sitting around a fire and cooking on it and being kept warm by it, we shouldn’t be throwing our rubbish on it, and especially not snot. She told me the Arrerente word for snot but (as usual) I can’t remember. She said we wouldn’t do that on a stove in our kitchens. SHe had no qualms about us leaving our rubbish in a pile “over there,” but we shouldn’t put it in the smoke we are all breathing in. I have learned that for aboriginal people, smoke is a healing thing. Any way, I will never put my snot on the fire again.

desert peoples centre opening Part 2

well where were we. the whole thing was broken up into two sections. the first section was an aboriginal ceremony where all of the language groups from central australia came together to dance and celebrate, but also for the traditional owners of the land to welcome others to it. not in a tokenistic way but ‘proper way’ to say this is a place where all aboriginal people are welcome and can feel safe. there is alot of politics around land with aboriginal people and effectively handing over land isnt done lightly, (eg the governmnets attempts to get aboriginal people to sign forty year leases to allow them to build housing there. many have not gone along with the proposition as it means they lose management control of the land. so for them to do this was very special. watching these traditional aboriginal people dancing was deeply moving. they were so excited to perform albeit with fairly poor aerobic capacity but it was a real occassion of white meeting black on their terms and teaching us.

the whole cultural ceremony was designed and developed by aboriginal people. that was both enlivening but also nerve racking for me who was supposed to be delivering this thing. after the dancing the ceremony moved into the caterpillar walk. this walk is an important aboriginal ceremony to smoke and cleanse the buildings for use. i was very nervous about the white black interaction and would the white fellas wig out saying this is a waste of time. how do you get 600 -700 people to walk in a queue around buildings for half an hour. i asked a close collegue whose been here awhile. do you think this is going to work? she said dont worry it will work. ok lets give it a go.

well to be a part of 600-700 people walking together black and white around the buildings was just one of the most amazing experiences. people were crying laughing chatting praying. my chairman an aboriginal man said he cried as it reminded him of the bridge walk in sydney where we all walked together. it was a truly aboriginal opening true to their culture and absolutely rivetting in every way.

we then stopped for morning tea and grab a breather as we were only two hours in so far [...]

bullets of me

Engaged

The Beginning of the End