The Lid

Felicity asked me kindly to convey the following message: They put a lid on our box.
As you can see (when it loads) our house, or the frame of our house, has a roof, or the frame of a roof. The top bit is on. They still have to tidy up a bit, then build the garage, but the woodwork is nearing completion. Soon bricks and insides and kitchens and things. I'm looking forward to it.
You could say I'm eager to move in.

Shakespeare in the Vines

Last night we enjoyed a picnic performance of Much Ado About Nothing in the gardens of the Seppelt's Winery. The grounds where the performance was held was a large grassed lawn surrounded by pine trees. Wine and gourmet food were available or you could bring something from home to share with friends.
I didn't want to disturb the experience for other people so the only photos I have are when there was music playing (and hence dancing).

As usual we took too much food and could not hope to eat it all - but it was very delicious!
We banqueted on anti pasto (fetta / fresh tomatoes and basil / martinated artichoke/olives / cold meats / italian bread and salad) and our desert was all kinds of fresh fruit with vanilla flavoured mascarpone.This was apparently the 4th year for the winery to host this theatre company in their gardens. Next year they will be performing Romeo and Juliet on the 27th of January - we have already marked it in our calendars and anyone else is more than welcome to join us! For those not familiar with Seppeltsfield and the Barossa you may like to visit these other websites.....
http://www.seppelt.com.au/vineyards/seppeltsfield.html
http://www.barossa-region.org/
The weather turned out to be just fine. We were quite worried on the drive there - it started to rain a little just after we had left home - within 30 minutes it was a torrential downpour. There was still a little rain falling in a town about 15 min away from Seppeltsfield - but when we arrived it was fine and the ground dry! I think we appreciated the evening even more because of it.

The perfect spot!!!

Today is Australia Day so everyone has a holiday today and people are enjoying the beach / tennis /bbqs. Yesterday we visited the house on our way home from work. We took the noren (Japanese door curtain) that I had bought in Nagoya (2002!), I have been wondering for a long time if I will ever find a good place to enjoy it. Well, I've found one! -this is the entrance way to our vanity (hand) basin for the bathroom at the back of the house. The hand basin and mirror are on the right handside behind the curtain.
If anyone in Nagoya knows a little shop in Sakae (I think it's in the Chunichi building - where Uniqlo is, but I forget which floor - I remember it was next to a shop with lots of hats). It is in a small corner near the escalators and sells clothing / noren and other fabric goods. The owners were so friendly to me - we enjoyed Japanese tea and sweets when I bought the noren. If they are still there I would love them to be able to see this photo!

Assignments Galore

I've been left in charge to post an update on the (amazingly continuing) progress with the house. Actually, Felicity is busy doing her assignment, it's late enough to go to sleep but I don't want to and I thought I'd sneak onto the computer and post something before she does. :)
A quick summary will have to suffice until Felicity can post.

Felicity posing next to our ROOF TRUSSES!	Our Shoes in the GENKAN!
Friday's progress	Monday's Progress!

There was another important event today but I'll leave the telling to Felicity, she gets much more excited.

The Day We've Been Waiting For ....

.... for 3+ months! Yes, that's right. As you have probably worked out for yourselves from the photo - today heralds the start of the house frame being built. After such long delays we have struggled to find great joy and enthusiasm with the limited progress being made - even the slab pouring day was an overwhelming sense of relief rather than excitement. But today, turning into St. Barberie Drive at 5pm and seeing something higher than ground level, was a wonderful feeling. I could almost put all our frustration / disappointment / displeasure behind me and truly believe that once we are in the house, all those months / years of not having our independent married life will seem insignificant. However, I am sure we will be able to rediscover the bitter and twisted people we had become within a minute or so of reviewing our paper, email and photo trail extending back to January 2004!. But for today at least it is all warm fuzzy 42oC thoughts - an auspicious temperature for today's event indeed.

For the first initiation into our house the perspective of the photo is as follows:
Bathroom is directly in front of the photographer
Laundary is to the left of the photo
Study and bedrooms to the right - please note, we have made an extra room for anyone who would like to visit us for a while!

Chef Glen

Monday - 16/06/2005 - Glen cooked Indian curry outside as it was too hot to use the kitchen. We also ate outside on the lawn too - but it was almost dark when we were ready to eat. This post was meant to go on the site on the day it happened - but you probably remember how I was stopped from making additional posts that night. So now it is the end of the week and the relevance of the photo is greatly dimished - however being the stubborn girl I am I am determined to put the post up even if it is 5 days overdue - now all I need is Glen to show me where the photo is located. Being even warmer tonight than on Monday (expected minumum of 26degC overnight - lovely!) Glen has taken to sitting outside and playing Wipeout Pure on our PSP. This will also give me the chance to distract him and abduct said PSP for Taiko Drumming action -

Our First Dinner Party in Crafers

Late entry - 12/01/2006 - the day we got a floor to our house. Glen has already put the photos of our floor on my website (that is what happens if it takes 3 week before you start to write something in your ejournal - husband starts to write for you) ... and now that I have started tonight, I don't want to stop! It is almost midnight and Glen is saying that two entries on the website is enough for tonight. Unfortunately I do not know how to get to the photo files on the other computer so I need Glen to help me - but I will learn and then I will be all powerful too!

Anyway, this entry goes with the photo of us entertaining our friends (Andrew and Ruth) at our "house" to celebrate us having a floor. Because it had only been poured that day we decided to eat dinner - picnic style - on our other large concrete item (the water tank) which has had over 16 weeks to dry and so was fine for the occassion. We feasted on Yiros from a Stirling takeaway shop - I hope they do good business and stay open - at least until we start to live in Crafers. It will be nice to walk there on a warm summer night to get dinner. All Adelaide people reading this - go to Cafe Giro in Stirling for the best Yiros in the Hills - we recommend Kafta or chicken shaslick as tried and tested favourites - there is also an ample variety of vegetarian options if so inclined (which I can atest to as also being very delicious). Andrew and Ruth brought a bottle of Champagne to add to the celebrations!

The Hairclip

Well, we were late going to the New Years party and didn't have time to check that the sequin hairclip I was wearing could be seen in the photo. Tonight I see for the first time that you can't see the hariclip at all, so I have taken a separate photo to show you. As mentioned, this was given to me by my student - Yuu - at En Cafe in Yobitsugi as a leaving gift. She chose matching hairclips for us both and bought them with her pocket money. This New Years Eve was the perfect occassion for me to wear it. - Arigatou gozaimasu Yuu-chan!

New Years Eve 2005

Hi Everyone reading my first message on my electronic journal. I am so sorry that it has taken me 3 weeks to start, I will try to post every week so there is always something new for you to look at. All of you will know that Glen and I have been building a house for a while now - even though we don't have one to live in yet we have already made many good friends with our neighbours-to-be. This year we celebrated New Years with our new neighbours and met many interesting people. It was a very fun time. Every year they have a dress-up theme - this year it was "Black-tie and sequins".... so we got dressed in fancy clothes that sparkled. I wore a hairclip of colourful sequins that Yuu gave me when we visited Nagoya in Oct/Nov 2004 - I can't believe that it has been almost 18months since we visited! Mo ichido Nagoya ni ikitai!

Progress Payment

It's late. After midnight. There's a full moon. (full enough, anyway) So, I'll make this short.
If you are reading this before the picture (left) loads, then this will be a surprise.

We have a slab.

Not of beer. We have a concrete slab. The type houses go on. You could call it the floor, the foundations, the concrete skate-park or the slab. We have two, actually. One for the house and one for the garage. I can feel the excitement rattling around in the deep hole which once was my trusting soul. It is good news today. I'm happy.

Brownies!

Hugh posted a comment to a post! And he posted a recipe to the brownies he made and we ate! I thought they were nice so you should click on comments for the 'A Pinch and a Punch' entry and cook them yourself! This post has a lot of exclamation marks!
I could go on about the PSP or update on the house-building progress, but the PSP still rocks and the house is still stuck in Limbo so there is no point.
Well, there was this...We put the sign back up! (It was in amongst the rubbish that has been blowing all over our neighbours' yards)
And there was this...
Which I just thought was a nice picture. Do you like?

Hurray for the Builders!

A quick check revealed... Nothing happened on the site today! For the first time, this is actually a good thing! The scheduling elves at Rossdale actually managed to not get the wood delivered to the site that was totally not ready for it! Yay!
Of course, it is possible that the wood arrived and departed by truck and was merely not unloaded due to some highly cognisant delivery person ascertaining that there was no damned place to put it!
Really, it's a story to warm the cockles of your heart.
Avast! More news as it spews forth from the miasma of Mt Lofty!
In the meantime, here's something that's really working hard. And I don't mean sitting in the office catching up on emails hard, I mean GROWING IN SOLID ROCK hard. Okay, so the blackberries do it all the time but these were intentional!

A Pinch and a Punch - No Returns

It's the new year! It's happy! I'm happy!
You may have been wondering, 'what has happened to Glen and Felicity? Have I missed important developments?' and stuff like that. Well, you don't need to worry! Nothing has happened! Our new slab has yet to arrive! Nothing, Nothing, Nothing! Get it while it's hot!
Okay, so no concrete. What's a couple of more weeks delay, huh? Well, the thing is, we're getting the wood for the frame delivered on the 3rd or, as I call it, the magical warping curly post and the carpenters are turning up on the 9th. Often busy people are annoyed when their time is wasted (Not unlike how we get annoyed when years are flushed down the toilet) so I hope the carpenters will just go 'Oh, those silly Rossdale guys, they got us in early, lets sit at home and while away the time until we can come back to this friendly site and practice our profession' in an nearly-believable but obviously faked non-descript European accent and affably slap each other across the back and smile.
No photo of the block this time. Just refer to an older one and imagine some yellow sticky-tape around the pipes.
Bought a PSP. rx. Felicity hogs it all the time. In fact, I'm writing this while she's playing it.
BTW, this year rx. I get a house.
And Steve and Linda get a youngling.

Don't forget to breath people.
(now that's a weird mental image)