I wanted to start it this year but it is so difficult in the current climate to know exactly what to say without offending someone. So I met with my solicitor yesterday, and on his advice, say the following:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

Also we wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make the world a great place, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the wishes for himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor…

Disclaimer:
No trees were harmed in the sending of this message, however, while a significant number of electrons were inconvenienced, no bits were lost.

Author: unknown. But sourced from a friend of a friend.

(I thought this was great! Merry Christmas to you – and best wishes – from me in Melbourne. Hope you have either a well-earned break or a few weeks of well-paid overtime, and get to spend time with those you love this Christmas!)

Cooking is honestly the hardest thing about living without a mum in the house. After many months (I’ve stopped counting now), we still really don’t know how to do it. It’s not the cooking per se, but the organisation of it all. For instance, right now, there’s not much in the fridge. So we need to go shopping. Then we all have such busy lives that we’re often only all here on about one night a fortnight. Most nights there’ll only be one of us at home – and that doesn’t give much inspiration to cook.

It’s not hard, and it’s not one thing that is stopping us, but rather everything coming together that makes it much easier to eat out, heat up something simple, or just decide one is not hungry (which unfortunately happens quite a lot…).

Now I got a book for Christmas called 4 Ingredients. This could revolutionise cooking in our household. I say could, because it depends on me taking the book as a hit of inspiration, holding that inspiration, and just pushing ahead even though every thing else makes it hard. As you’ve probably guessed, the book is filled with recipes that only need four ingredients. It also has a list of what your pantry should always have in it. Now that solves the shopping problem. As long as we can keep the pantry stocked according to this list, then we can plan out the meals for the week and just drop past the shops on the way home from work to pick up the fresh ingredients – and, because only four ingredients are needed, chances are we’ll have them (and they won’t be hard to find in the shops).

Easy in principle.

I need to take the inspiration and hold it… and just make everything else a non issue. For example, if I know I’m going to be the only one home, I just need to cook anyway and save the leftovers. My body will thank me for the more healthy meal.

Now that I’ve written that here, maybe I’ll actually do it!

I also got $100 worth of these for Christmas:

They’ll come in very handy for about a month… or maybe less now, considering petrol yesterday was $1.45. $1.45!!!

I also got a Bocce set:

And these very cool USB rechargable batteries:

A great idea, but not just for the cool factor – they can be very well applied with a wireless keyboard and mouse!

Oh, and Telstra also finally performed a port change for our ADSL connection just before Christmas – it was a very appreciated present!

Merry Christmas! It’s almost here. It’s snuck up quickly. So quickly that I only just last night actually decided – and organised – what I’m doing for Christmas. I’m so used to Dad organising everything we’re going to do and just going along with it… but this will be my first Christmas without my family.

Hmm. That’s a little sad. I’m sure they’re missing me too.

I’m taking two weeks off work at Christmas – only some of that I’ll be away for. I might plan another trip – down to the coast or somewhere similar, depending on who I can find to go with me. And I still need to find something to do for New Year’s Eve as well.

If I’m lucky, I might get an early Christmas present from Telstra in the form of a port change for our ADSL connection. Maybe I’m being too hopeful. It’s been almost a month, with no proper Internet!

It’ll be nice to have some spare time to myself, in my time off, to think about 2008. Things are going to be very different; there’s a lot I have to pray about and prepare for. And not just for 2008 either. I’m excited about the future further than that. So much is going to happen. Someone’s going to need to hold me back so I don’t rush out prematurely and trip over something!

Whoever you are, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope you have a great Christmas too.

I’ve decided that I’m missing writing on here enough to warrant venturing, slowly I might add, back into the world of dialup Internet.

I have discovered tonight that once Windows automatic updates start, I can’t actually stop them. And whilst I can try in vain to terminate wuauclt.exe, it can always just start up again seven seconds later (and it seems to make a habit of it). Furthermore, an audio file that I wanted to post here was actually left on my computer at work so I’m attempting to download it.

This all makes browsing a much more frustrating experience, but I guess it gives me more time during page loads to write! (And I’m writing this in Word, by the way, because my blog’s login screen hasn’t loaded yet).

Oh how I remember the world of broadband. I really had forgotten how slow dialup was. Luckily sharing is turned off now – three guys trying to use the one dialup connection wasn’t fun!

So it has been an interesting few weeks, even apart from the Internet not working. I went up to Sydney for the Heart 1032 open day and learnt a lot about how a capital city commercial-like community station is run, and gathered some ideas and inspiration for things I can do at 1WAY FM. I also met Guy Sebastian. I have a photo, but of course I’ll be here for years if I try to upload it, so I won’t do that right now. I also saw Wendy Mathews, Marcia Hines, and the woman who plays Irene Roberts on Home and Away (I can’t remember her name and Google will take too long to search for it).

I’m going up to Sydney again this weekend (I think it’s my second home… I must be up there at least fifteen or so times a year) for Open House’s Christmas party – yep, I can’t get enough of Heart 1032! Having many more resources, coming naturally from being in a bigger market, there is so much to learn from what they’ve done and are doing. So my brushes with fame continue – I will be meeting Jason Stevens, and probably Darlene Zschech as well (I decided to wait out the time for Google to load to check that I’d spelt that right – turns out I had!).

Back to Canberra, and to completely change topic, there has been some interesting news for the ACT Liberals this week. Leader Bill Stefaniak and his deputy Jacqui Burke both stepped down yesterday morning after a week of turmoil in which one party member launched an attack on the leadership of Mr Stefaniak and ended up being dumped – and became an independent. It’s probably good news all around though – Jacqui Burke told me yesterday that the calm that is evident now within the party has really not been seen for three years. That must mean that they’re in a better position now to win the next ACT election in October. I get the vibe that a lot of Canberra doesn’t like Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, and having young blood in place with Zed Seselja may make the Liberals a viable alternative!

Of course, if I had broadband working, I would post the interview that I did with Jacqui yesterday, but I’m really having too much trouble downloading it from work.

Hmm… if I had broadband working I would also be able to post some audio from the Carols by Candlelight in Jerrabomberra last Saturday evening – 1WAY FM broadcasted live from the event, and I managed to grab an interview with Santa of all people! He has really moderned up this year – he turned up in a fire truck (I think his reindeers were too busy getting ready for Christmas Eve), and he’s lost a lot of weight!! His trick, he told me, is to eat lots of vegetables.

I really could write a lot more but I’ve already spent collectively about an hour on the phone tonight to Internode trying to resolve our ongoing connection problems… and there’s other things I could be doing. So until I manage to brave dialup again, or until our Internet actually gets fixed, au revoir!