mykrocosm

I came home from work to find :

- A poorly-feeling missus who hadn’t gone to work

- A broken, horribly groaning washing machine

- A broken glass in the kitchen

They say these things come in threes.

We brought a friend over and made some sushi for lunch, having gathered all the necessary bits from the Central Market.  Slices of Atlantic salmon, crab meat, tuna, avocado, cucumber, fried egg, and ginger along with dabs of japanese mayonnaise, wasabi and soy sauce all made their delicious way into our Californian-style rolls.

K taught us a neat new trick - you can press the roll into a tear-drop shape and make flower petals with it!

I gave my colleagues a bit of a shock this morning when I announced that having been married for less than a month, the missus and I were off to our third Marriage Counselling session today.

The real story isn’t quite so exciting - it’s simply part of Pre-Cana, which is a requirement of the Catholic Church that any couples first undertake about three to four hours of counselling to prepare them for marriage.

Yes, I know what you’re saying now, you bright spark, you! Yes we’re already married..technically. We just kind of fudged that part. Rings accidentally jumped a few fingers. And we are getting married (again, ahem) in two months time. In another country.

Historically, so Wikipedia and Google informed me, Pre-Cana tended to be heavily loaded with religious pressures. Living in sin. Abortions. The whole shebang! The web was full of stories from people who sat and suffered through every minute of their barely-relevant full-room sermons.

Well, I was to be pleasantly surprised - we chose the private counselling option, and the three sessions through Centacare were all very non-denominational and completely devoid of any religious messages. It was simply a gentle and relaxed counsellor, the two of us, a long questionnaire, and some interesting, frank and insightful discussions. The only concessions to the fact we were on Catholic ground was a couple of pamphlets that the counsellor almost apologetically gave us.

My philosophy was, since we had to do it, why not take advantage of the resources and go with the flow? The FOCCUS questionnaire that we spent the whole first session filling out turned out to be pretty accurate. It highlighted what we pretty much already knew - we were pretty attuned in how we felt about family and friends, financial matters, and our ethics, morality and values. It also identified that we needed to work on our negotiation approaches - ie. how we reach a compromise and the means we use to get there.

In the later sessions she gave us articles and parts of books which drilled into those areas. I found these reassuring - it helps to know that you’re not the only couple in the world working on these things. I quite enjoyed the whole process, and I found it endlessly fascinating how the arcane ambiguities of the human mind and the human heart could be captured and explained in a relatively logical manner.

So we concluded our last session today, got the certificate, and now we’re set. In theory. The package includes a return visit in a year’s time - it’ll be interesting to see if we retained anything we learnt

We had a picnic with a friend in the Botanic Gardens today - the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the green parrots darted between the trees. Several other groups dotted the verdant lawn enjoying the brilliant weather. A family of ducks and eight little ducklings paraded back and forth, stopping briefly at each blanket to visit and pay their polite regards before waddling off.

Nice, relaxing, I could have dozed off and napped there all afternoon.

Today I was horrified to learn that the ABC has axed one of its best shows.

One of my favourite weekly programs, The Glass House features three well known Australian comedians and guest stars who run through a whole riff of irreverent jokes and discussions on topical current affairs. While it occasionally descends into the gutter, the show moves along quickly and there’s some pretty clever writing in it.

(It should be on tonight, Wed 9:30pm, ABC, if you’re wondering what its about)

Now I’m normally pretty immune to this sort of thing from the commercial networks, but if its true that political pressure was brought to bear on our national taxpayer-funded broadcaster in order to shut this show down simply because they dared to poke fun at John Howard and George Bush then in the words of Dave Hughes, “I’m angry tonight, bloody angry.”

Way back in February 2005 I tried out jotspot, an online wiki that gives you your own space at yourname.jot.com. I know a few others who gave it a go too. It was a great way for me to learn some good wiki habits for personal organisation, but after a few months I started to find it a tad too clunky and I never really liked the idea of having DOYAW, data on yet another website. I ended up installing MediaWiki on my own domain.

Today I noticed that Google just bought Jot Spot. Curious I thought, surely the technologies in that site wouldn’t be beyond the expertise of the Google folk. And they already have a semi-wiki site in Google Notebook - at first I wondered how they were going to align these two products. Perhaps they’ll merge them?

Then I discovered the agenda could be even bigger - Jotspot’s CEO stated earlier this year that their aim was to “embrace and extend” some of Microsoft’s Office products. I have a suspicion that Jotspot had some big projects in the pipeline and that these, not the wiki system, is what Google really wants!

Everyone seems to be posting their clock count for daylight saving, here’s ours :

Car (2), Microwave, Oven, Hallway Clock, Bedside Alarms (2), Phones (2) for a total of 9.

And now the whinges :

Both clocks in the car are factory fitted, and they seem to get more than 5 minutes out of sync before you’ve reached the next service station.

We still can’t figure out how to change the clock on the Oven.

And why is it that even when you have your phone’s options set to “Automatically update date and time”, it doesn’t??

On Friday we disappeared into a lovely little Balinese BnB cottage up at Birdwood. I packed a huge basket overflowing with watermelon, honeydew, mangoes, strawberries, sun dried tomatoes, artichokes, eggplant, spicy fetta, brie, other cheeses, olives, kabanas, salads, foccacia, ciabattis, wine, the works.

We could literally feel ourselves unwinding over the first couple of hours we were there. We spent the whole weekend drinking, eating and enjoying ourselves in the spa bath and in front of the cosy wood fire. We ventured out once on Saturday evening to stroll the main street, and on Sunday afternoon we stopped off at the Lobethal Heart of the Hills Market before finishing our leisurely drive home.

What a wonderful weekend. What a wonderful city we live in. Never mind those long, car-weary journeys - there are so many great getaways right on our doorstep!

So I got another Blogger’s Prod … but I have a pretty damn good excuse - I just got married! So there.

October has just been a blur. To recap, the highlights :

• Buck’s night. I’m still gathering the full story from those who attended.
• Family. With my sister back from London, the Flea Folk flying in from Singapore, and several interstatial relatives, there was an awful lot of dinners, barbeques and gatherings
• Friends. Even more dinners, barbeques and gatherings.
• House. Even after two months living in the new house we still hadn’t found a home for all our possessions. Then we had to procure and set up two more beds. Even that wasn’t enough, as we wound up accodomating seven bodies. All sharing one bathroom. Yep.
• Garden. All the lovely plants in our new garden started dying. And the lawn too. Apparently they wanted water or something like that. Geez, needy much?
• The Big Day. October 14th. A perfect and memorable day. I can’t really do it justice with words right now.
• Here We Go Again. Not content with one, we’re following up with a second wedding in Singapore in three months time. So instead of getting to relax and enjoy ourselves this past week, we started the whole shebang all over again, designing invitations, shopping for paper and envelopes, and making lists, making lists, making lists…
• The Recurring Greeting. “Why do you look so tired? Get some sleep…”
  

Ok so we’ve spent the whole day planning the big occasion, and patience is starting to wear really thin. Then milady drops her pen (we’re at the point of his and hers pens by now) and announces “I need chocolate, I’m too stressed”. I’m all, “Is that the best mechanism for dealing with stress?” and she’s like, “I don’t care. I need the endorphins”. So we debate that for a while.

Long story short, I give in and we have some chocolate. I match her bite for bite, just to keep her company. So we have a fair bit. And funnily enough within ten minutes it’s worked - we finish out the rest of the the day’s planning on a really nice high.

I have a disconcerting feeling that I just set a precedent Dr Phil wouldn’t like. So you tell me. What’s a feller supposed to do?