School holiday fun and games It's a wet Tuesday today, the start of the working week because yesterday was a public holiday - the Queen of Australia's birthday for Western Australia. I say this every year; her real one is on 21 April, but most Western Australians can't get their heads around that date.
Nothing much happened in this household apart from enabling all the old iMacs to download some free system software updates from Apple - one computer at a time. One of the problems is that some of the kids have so much iTunes music on their machines that there is not enough room on the hard drives to do the installation. A message comes up advising that some stuff must be dumped to make way. The iMacs need about 300mb of free space.
Kids are attracted to some oddball music. Almost entirely the sort of stuff I don't enjoy. I don't interfere, but insist that they figure out what can go to allow the upgrades, or else. The "or else" being disconnection from our broadband network. That threat hurries things along. I've not had to execute it yet.
The school holidays are with us. This means stress for parents. We have been getting demands for all sorts of expensive excursions as they are advertised on TV. I was also told by one of our teenagers on the weekend that "all" her friend's parents are buying their children new cars. This has never been our game, as was politely explained. My wife pointed out that it took us 22 years to buy ourselves a new car.
We intend to organise a fishing excursion and wildflower picnic some time over the next two weeks. Maybe a trip to the zoo too.
Last week I had to replace the lock on the front door. The old one wore out and meant that we could stand there for a minute jiggling the key. A new lock meant extra keys. I had to have ten more cut to replace those in circulation. Almost forty bucks worth of keys from Bunnings.
This week our two plumbing apprentices start a compulsory education bloc at TAFE - four weeks release on full pay from their brothers' company. Another brother, our eldest son, is also starting a new career as a plumbing and gasfitting teacher with TAFE. It appears that he will have his younger brothers to contend with in one of his classes. He is highly skilled and a former plumbing and gasfitting Apprentice of the Year in this state. All our lads have won high awards during their apprenticeships.
I just observed a man putting junk mail in our letterbox. That's good, I need my fix. I'm gonna' go and read it.
© MMVI Paul R. Weaver.
About the writerCheck out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write a million words.
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