Our New Home

I originally started blogging so that friends and family could keep up to date with what I was up to and in doing so would hopefully not worry if all was going well.  Unfortunately I have posted so infrequently lately am having the opposite effect.  I am making people worry by my silence.

I will in the future try to write at least a few comments regularly just so you know all is well.

I have a busy week this week.  My twin brother Paul is visiting from Israel with his wife Ruth and their kids, Itai and Dana.  They are leaving on Wednesday and on Thursday Patrick and I are moving to our new unit in Brighton, and then on Friday my mother is having her 80th Birthday party which thankfully my brother Jack has done most of the organising for.

Explaining about the  new house takes me back to almost where I wanted to start filling you in from when we got back from our trip down the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide.

We had been back just over a week from our holidays and I woke up on Saturday morning think I had to go to the vet to get Choochie more of his special dog food. On the way I dropped in to a house inspection. I wasn't really looking seriously but this sounded interesting. The place was an old converted Fire Station and the photos looked very pleasant. I jumped in the car to get the dog food and punched into the navigation system the address of the open inspection.

I walked into the unit, a lovely 3 bedroom place with a lounge / dining room with large north facing glass door/windows opening onto a gorgeous landscaped garden. The sun was shining and it looked perfect.

As I was leaving to the car to get the dog food, I asked the real-estate agent when the auction was - thinking he would say 3 or 4 weeks. He said, 'In 5 minutes.'

I thought I would hang around watch. The first person bid and then the auctioneer was searching for another bidder and then it happened, I decided to bid. I thought Patrick would understand why I had to when he sees the place for sure. And so it went backwards and forward between me and another bidder several times and them bam, everyone was applauding and the auctioneer as shaking my hand and invited me in to sign the papers.

I went inside and when he asked me if I had my cheque book for the deposit and asked who my conveyance lawyer was I realised I had now idea what I was doing. At this point I thought I was going to throw up. Anyway I had until Monday to get everything organised but in all the excitement I totally forgot to buy Choochie his food.

Once Patrick saw the place he did see why I did it and eventually concluded that it was a special quality I had being impulsive like that. I think the real estate agent telling Patrick about clients that have been going to auctions for 6 months not being able to make decisions and then finally buying a place they didn't like out of desperation, helped him come to that realisation.

Also just after I got back, Julie asked me if she could throw a birthday party for in their house.  At first I didn't want to because Julie had been such a great friend throughout the year and she had already done so much for me, I really didn't want her to put her self out so much again.  However I decided to take up her up on it. 

I was very grateful for her offer.  I thought this birthday was a very special because it was the first birthday I really thought I almost might not have had.   I also very much wanted the opportunity to invite all my friends and family who were around for me the past year - all the people who helped pull me through such a difficult time in my life and keep me smiling and keeping positive through it all.   Julie also organised to have a dear friend Jennifer, who I had lost contact with and hadn't seen for  almost 18 years, to come down from Sydney for the party.

It was a really a fantastic night and thanks to everyone who helped make it that - especially of course to Julie.

A couple of weeks ago Patrick and I went to see one of my favourite bands, Air - French band, at the Palais and they were absolutely brilliant.  It was so enjoyable that I decided I should make more of an effort to see live music performances.  So when my sister-in-law told asked if I wanted to come along with them to some Jazz performances last night for the fringe Jazz festival I was very keen.   I should have guessed that being part of the fringe festival it could be a little over the edge.    The MC introduced the acts as the type of music these musicians 

never get the opportunity to play in public and we soon learned why.  The first musician sounded as grating as chalk on a blackboard.  He placed an electric guitar using a comb, a magnet and some screws.   The next band tried to capture the essence of David Lynch movies.  Describing his movies as interesting and mundane they then started to play and went on and on and on and on and really captured the mundaneness that they were looking for.   None of us could figure out what was jazz about anything we saw last night but guess I sort of expected that from a fringe jazz festival.  There were only about 20 people in the audience so I guess this music really does cater to only a very small band of enthusiast - unless they were all just as bored as we were.

Oops this post is getting long and I have to go to bed  so I will go over what I wrote and edit this bit out tomorrow and finish it off.  cya