2009-09-28 - 4:19 p.m.

I've been doing some crazy hours at work the last two weeks, and it's felt pretty good. I started early today and it's already half an hour past the accepted "hometime" but that still doesn't stop me from feeling guilty writing in here at work. As a manager who should be policing the reasonable internet usage of his staff and all.

Still- our computer has decided to have one of it's yearly tantrums which will mean finding time I don't have to take it somewhere to be repaired, so I've had to do my personal internetting at work.

As it turns out it isn't as long between entries as I thought it had been. I missed July, managed two in August and now I'm squeezing one in before the end of September. Yes, the secret of success is to set low goals.

So tomorrow is my 32nd birthday, and I don't really feel like I need to do any reflecting on that- except to say that 31 certainly was a memorable year. Incidentally last Tuesday was the 6 month anniversary of our Wedding, which is crazy. I thought I'd be less busy when we didn't have to do some element of wedding planning each weekend, but it certainly hasn't felt that way.

The weekend just past was my birthday celebration weekend- in conjunction with Sally's farewell as she heads back to the UK. The races were fun, but given that we were inside and half the time not even facing the racetrack, we could have been at a big pub with a TAB. Jo and I had a $5 each way bet each on each race (ie $20 per race over 7 races). We recovered less than half of it.

Dinner was at the surprisingly-good-for-a-leagues-club "Fishy Affair" at Souths Juniors. In attendance was myself, Jo, Sally, Nathan, Steve, Mark & Phoebe, Sara & Paul, Rowan and Blanche, Chris and Pete. A subset of us took a misguided cab ride to the Rocks after dinner (the way we were split up there were 3 guys without girls trying to get into the Orient and that's never going to happen) before predictably (see previous entry) Mark and I ended up at the Townie until 5am. Only this time it felt like we spent just the right amount of time there- neither of us was threatening to raid each others' home liquor supply.

What else has been happening since the last time I wrote? The long hours at work have been due to us moving labs, which has been simultaneously exciting and stressful. I can't concentrate on anything else because it's such a big thing, but essentially my job is to monitor other people's progress, which in turn means giving them enough space to actually do the work but not so much that they end up wandering off and doing something other than what they said they were doing, which in turn means spending at least some amoutn of time sitting on my hands in my office.

The weekend after I last wrote was Jo's birthday weekend, which consisted of dinner at the Glebe Point Diner on Friday night (21/8), dinner at "La Boheme" in Balmain on Saturday night followed by drinks, and family lunch in Cronulla on the first 30 degree plus day since March- which made for fun parking. A couple of weeks after for what was essentially Jo's birthday present we stayed at the Shangri-La, went to a matinee performance of "Avenue Q" and dined at Becasse. The week after that we went on a Hunter Valley Wine Tour for Kitty's 30th, before going to a Spanish Restaurant in the city for my sister's 30th, before heading out to the Shire for a family friend's 18th the next day.

Last weekend we actually had more or less to ourselves, and we've started painting the lounge room. Which reminds me that I should go home because I think I promised to wash down another wall so Jo could undercoat it tonight.

That is all.

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