18th Sept 2011-09-18 Life goes on at 695 but still no action regarding our new house start, it’s becoming a little frustrating now but can’t do much about it I guess. The delay depends upon whom you ask as to what department is actually holding things up. Weather has been quite settled this past week with clear skies and warm temperatures, it’s a nice time of the year getting the warmth without the humidity, I believe it was in the low 30’s today. Now the school holidays have started it will probably turn to poo. Heading up to Kenilworth in the Sunshine Coast hinterland next weekend for a weeklong art workshop, looking forward to that. With a bit of luck we will be able to catch up with some old friends that have recently moved to Landsborough to live. Disappointing result for Australia in the world cup rugby union on Saturday, Ireland was definitely the better team on the day and deserved the win and would you believe half the NZ spectators were barracking for the Irish. You’ve got to feel sorry for them carrying that great chip all the time. My persistent skin ailment has been driving me crazy lately, probably as severe as it was when it first started about 5 or 6 years ago. So with a degree of trepidation I commenced a course of Phenergan antihistamine, I say with a degree of trepidation as I experienced horrible side affects when they were prescribed for me several years ago for some allergy. Well things haven’t changed any, talk about non compos mendis, I have been like a zombie for best part of the past week, all the time expecting to have less side affects as time progressed. Admittedly it would appear to have had the desired effect as I have experienced a lot of relief in the past couple of days and fortunately the local chemist has recommended another brand of antihistamine with less side affects. Assuming from that, I suffer from allergies the next task is to try and identify what the catalyst is. Having spent a small fortune on specialists and doctors in the past to no avail, it will be wonderful if it gets down to something as simple as diet. It may not be stress after all although I’m pretty sure that’s how it all started. Enough dribble it is time to make the family a cup of tea. cheers Nigel and Nancy

5th Sept 2011 Finally getting my act together and thought it was about time I made the effort to bring this up todate. Life at 695 has been fairly hectic with a variety of different issues that needed to be attended to but we seem to be gradually getting on top of things. Nancy has managed to recommence her voluntary work at Braille House on Fridays and I am keenly attending watercolour classes on a Monday arvo. As anal as I was with logging all our storage boxes, their locality and contents, it has been amazing how many times I have wanted something and have ended up going through boxes to find the one thing that wasn’t itemized, typical. Mind you I’m more organized than she who has to be obeyed. At least with all of my planning and documenting I have only misplaced a few items and can usually pin it down to 2 or 3 boxes max. Nancy, who kept putting off packing and firmly told me she would look after her own things, ended up throwing all of her clothes into containers and large plastic bags as the removalist’s carried all of our household items out to their truck, so nothing of hers got documented. Guess what? She hasn’t been able to find any of her good underwear (much to my amusement). Talk about confusion with changing addresses, a lot of companies we have been able to change details on line, which I did with one of the banks we deal with. The same bank handles our insurances and have always been very good to deal with and very efficient. This time they only changed my details so when Nancy contacted them to change the rest of the banking details they inadvertently cancelled Nancy’s debit card so the next time she shoved the card into a teller to withdraw some cash it gobbled up her card, she still hasn’t received her new one. Then they informed us we were getting a good discount refund on the 4wd insurance as there is less risk at Lota!!! Unfortunately they cancelled the insurance on the Honda at the same time, so Lisa was driving around the country for several days uninsured. Oh! No worries we would have covered you, yea right. Pays to double check every bloody thing. Like when Nancy rang the bank because when I read the settlement details from the solicitor I complained how the bank had charged us about $300 dollars for being late with a mortgage payout. Fortunately Nancy is a bit more diplomatic than me and made a polite enquiry only to discover it was a credit the solicitor had charged the buyers of our house for causing the delay. Not good she got one back on me. My computer has been causing me all sorts of grief lately and I eventually purchased a new one before the old beast crashed permanently. I settled on a MacPro laptop, partially so I am compatible with Lisa’s peripherals. So I have been labouring to come to grips with not only the latest version of Microsoft’s Office for Mac, I am also trying to get my head around a completely different operating system and transfer files, programmes, websites and email addresses from my old computer to a new system that doesn’t want to know the old Dell exists. But I’m getting there and hence I was able to write this update. And that’s enough for tonight. Keep smiling N&N