general life news

No, I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth, but my computer might as well have. Today I found a way to trick it into allowing me to write a post, but I don’t know if I will always be able to do this. I have ordered a new laptop – wooohooo! – but it won’t arrive for a month or so, and this old thing seems to have decided it can retire now. So expect me to be back to normal form in a month or so and I’m sorry if I neglect you, my friends, in the meantime. I’ll do my best.

I’ve had lots of things to talk about all those days that I couldn’t, but today I’ve got, apparently, nothin’. We still haven’t found a rental house in the Adelaide Hills, but there’s no real deadline for that other than the fact that we’re looking forward to our new adventure. I have put purple pansies in the garden amongst the violets in readiness for the open inspections that I hope will be happening here soon, and also as a sign of gratitude to our landlady for how we have loved living here.

I often lately have that subtle bubbling feeling of anticipation you get when something exciting is going to happen, but I don’t know what the exciting thing is. Possibly nothing. The feeling is the thing. Perhaps I instigated it by wishing for passion in Sanctuary a few posts ago. (I actually have my tool bar back today but I’m not prepared to tempt fate by trying to create a link. I would just cry if it all fell in a heap.)

My ex?-partner and I will be staying one night this (long) weekend in my cabin in the mountains. I hardly ever stay there anymore but it’s just lovely in the winter with the wood fire and the high deck under the trees, looking across at the (sometimes snow-covered) mountains. C likes to find a spot away from the cabin where he can sit on the slope amongst the bushes and watch the wildlife meander past at sunset. Or sunrise, except, of course, he never manages to get up for that one. It’s the one place we can spend time together without me being required to provide his entertainment. He loves to test his camouflage out there too (Don’t talk to me about camouflage!) so I usually don’t even know where he is. You know, we have never seen a wombat there although we often see or hear evidence that one or more live there. They like to do neat grassy poos on high spots like rocks or garden steps. We are always stepping around them.

I may be working half days in the office for the next 3 weeks while one of the draftspeople there is on holidays. It depends how many of his jobs need adjustments or move to the next stage. Another of the draftspeople was retrenched recently because rising interest rates have taken their toll on the building industry and there wasn’t enough work. This is quite sad because I liked that man. Nobody likes the one who is on holidays much. We’re all scared of him, including the boss, but he has been there the longest so I don’t suppose it would have been easy to retrench him instead.

While I am in the office I might try and have a play with the ‘Chief Architect’ program on the newly-spare computer. I am still a manual drafter. Manual drawings look nicer but you can’t email them and other people can’t amend your notes without it looking obvious. I don’t know, everybody seems to use computer drafting these days. I don’t really know why. Most companies use auto-cad which I have learnt to use, but have never used in my work so I would have to learn it all again. And it is the same program that would be used for engineering drawings or even land-surveying and, possibly, mapping so it’s very long-winded. Chief architect is specifically for houses, so you are thinking in terms of walls, roofs, windows and such. I haven’t learnt how to do it but it seems that it should be a cinch to pick up. I’m thinking ahead a bit. I have to find some new clients in Adelaide and it gets harder and harder to find companies that want manual drafting. Perhaps it would be nice to take my new laptop to a cafe and do my work there. Can’t really lug my drawing board, drafting chair and tray of technical pens around with me.

I had to put some updated drawings into the planning department this week for the house I am planning to build on that property in the mountains. Of course I may not be building it after all now, if it turns out Jas and I want to stay in Adelaide, but having already spent several thousand dollars on this application I am going to see it through. I believe bureaucracy of this kind is on its way out. I don’t think it serves us anymore, and it’s ours. Anyway, point being, even when I don’t expect to be living in the house I am designing, I just love designing houses and gardens, ‘living spaces’ as we architects like to call them, for myself. I can spend a lot of what might be considered work-time nutting out the intricacies and ‘being in’ the spaces I create.

I’ve been losing weight in a haphazard kind of way which always feels fabulous, and we have brought a rowing machine to our house which I use for about half an hour a day. The walking is still in fits and starts (which makes me think of John Cleese out on the walking trail) but on the whole I can do more and more of it without old injuries complaining too much, and I just love that strong-in-the-lungs feeling you get when you are increasing your fitness.

So, I don’t know, nothing’s news but everything’s fabulous. Hope I will be back again soon.