Canberra
I “met” Jenny a significant number of years ago. I can remember trading emails back in the days of the original Knitlist; discussing the challenges of study, profession and craft combined with the raising of small critters. She was in Ft Collins while I was in Heidelberg.
We first physically met in 2006 while she was house sitting in France for one of her colleagues, youngest child in tow. I took Ms Maus and the Mole on the drive along the French/German border and into the countryside of the Alscaes. We spent a lovely weekend taking walks with dogs and looking around the village in which they were living.
Fast forward to today – Jenny and her family have long since returned to home in Australia and relocated from Perth to Canberra a number of years ago. She bailed us out of the airport and we spent a lovely few days with her and her family. James took us to Tidbinbilla, to the War Memorial, The Australian National Musuem (fantastic exhibition of one of the Canning Stock Road) and up to the top of the Telstra Tower. On Wednesday, Jenny took off work to drive us to Bowral, stopping to see both the Big Merino and the Alpaca Centre on our way to the required yarn shop. We stopped at Lake George on the way home.
The last night, we (Maus and I) spent with my cousin Margo. A second cousin (I believe) she landed in Australia almost 20 years ago after a number of years in the UK. I had met her parents in St Louis back in about 1972 and her younger sister in DC prior to 1993. We trucked around, seeing the National Gallery and the National Portrait Musuem.
The pictures come from various points along the way – they will be labelled when I have longer access to the Internet than the 30 minutes that come free on a daily basis.
My mind keeps boggling. The other times I have been south of the equator were Dec (Argentina) and Jan/Feb – Kenya. It was warm, it was fine. I didn’t mind that it wasn’t winter. In fact, I never even thought about the fact that it wasn’t winter except to enjoy the sunshine.
This is something else. Understand, it is simply not that cold. Canberra is cooler than the coast, but temps are 10ยบ or better. Not exactly Minnesota standards of winter but still there is this small voice in the back of my mind that keeps saying it is supposed to be warm in August.
The Maus and I have pretty much recovered from the time zone changes. We have been up the Telstra Tower, spent a bit of time in the War Memorial and saw a fabulous exhibit at the National Museum. Today we got out of town to a couple of historic inland towns (and made a yarn store stop of course).
Tomorrow we are letting Jenny get back to her deadlines and inflicting ourselves on my cousin (distant cousin who I don’t remember as having met. Her parents yes in St Louis back around 1972-73 and her sister Karen who visited us in DC around the time that Noah was small.). Brave woman for taking us on.
Then Friday it is off to Adelaide!
I was going to entertain you with the continuing saga of toilet seats. Three bathrooms, two guys, and the seats are always up. Does not seem like a good idea to leave home for a while now, does it?
Maus and I are going to Australia – Lufthansa through Singapore and Quantas from there to Melbourne.
We are going to visit wonderful people – relatives, new friends, old friends, internet friends and finish up at World Con in Melbourne.
Taking only a little knitting, a book and lots of electronics. It is a long, long, long flight once you add in the time zones.
I promise pictures this time!
I had that other list. Started at about 23 items, killed off half and added almost all that number back.
Made a new list before the drive yesterday, but lost it. So, made another list today on my iPad. It got up to 19 items, but I have managed to finish a few. A couple more will be taken care of in the morning. It still leaves me with a couple of the biggies – like someone has to own up to cutting orders so that I can make reservations to get to Ft Benning.
I have iPad, I have iPod, I have books.
What I really should do is unpack stuff, but I will probably knit!
After I wrote the above sentence several times, I finally figured out that I should just go ahead and let everyone know that the Mole and I arrived safely home.
We will not talk about rough ferry rides, rain across three countries or all the road construction in Belgium. Nor will we speak about the Dutch petrol station along the autobahn with new automated charge stations at each set of pumps. Facing out into the rain, the little electronic babies had water dripping out of them. Not surprisingly enough, they weren’t able to read a strip credit card. The woman inside did not want to run a charge the first time I went in, but the second time I insisted. We had already wasted 15 minutes at the pump trying different credit cards. Machine insisted on pin numbers: I don’t have chip & pin cards…..
Now I am sitting back in my living room on the more than comfortable couch with the Maus perched next to me. The car still needs to be unloaded but I am taking a break. 0300 wake up on the other side of the channel already seems a life time ago.
Wasn’t it just yesterday, another cold and rainy time, when I drove across on the ferry and made the left turn into RMAS? Actually it was Jan 2008 and my time here is just hours away from being at an end.
The Mole and I will head off camp at 0330 in the morning to catch the 0600 ferry. I am on line finishing up correspondence and transferring last minute details over to my successor while he packs the car. Duelling loadmasters is not the way to go.
In the last 30+ months I have become convinced that American and English are completely different languages, Armies are more like each other than are sister services within the same country and that any large system will screw you over given any opportunity at all!
I will let you know when we hit Germany. Might be tired, might be a bit crazy, but we will be home!
There have been times in my life where I look back, shaking my head, and wonder how I managed to accomplish all that I did.
And then there is now – running in place as fast as I can and knowing that the towering mass just behind will smash down, flattening me just like Coyote looses to Roadrunner.
There are significant differences to the two scenarios. In the first case, I had huge tasks stacked on me with some resources but mostly my complete attention with minimal other distractions (can you spell deployed?), clear goals and some definite endpoints. In the current situation, there is just a lot to do, and I am the one who is going to suffer if it is not completed.
Shall we add that I really don’t like spending time in self promotion?
Anyway, I have whittled my task list down steadily while completing a number of other jobs that only were added onto the end of the list as they were finished so that I would feel better. Like helping the Mole with some applications and writing a supporting letter explaining his educational history (gee – what if you don’t have a high school guidance counselor? Who does fill out those fun forms?)
Tomorrow it is London, Thursday on to Andover. Friday it may be a run out to who knows where to bail a car out of the VPC (vehicle processing center, don’t you just love that the military can come up with an abbreviation for anything?). Sat we pack the car. Sunday we repack the car after I get done finding all the things that are still in my office…..
Monday I go home.
Yesterday was load of fun. Some how, when I kept putting off laundry, it did not occur to me that I would wind up without access to either washer or dryer as a result of my procrastination. Here I was, trying to save energy by delaying till I had full loads (that is my story, sticking to it….) and now I was stymied.
My friend Anita came to the rescue. Not only did she volunteer use of her washer/dryer do-all combination thing but she fed me a lovely veggie bake as well. Arriving home late in the evening, I hung damp clothes all over the house as I had run out of the ability to stay long enough to see two loads dried.
This morning, it was off to the airport early in order to bail out my replacement and then spend the rest of the day trying to brief him and sort out what we are doing which day.
And avoid those last two bits of paperwork that I absolutely must complete prior to departing here. Or is it three? Four?
Clueless here, driving on the 16th and can’t find where I tucked the ball of grey yarn that I need to finish a vest (waistcoat). Argh!
Or something like that.
I am cranking steadily down my to-do list. And, when sanity hits, I am even taking a few moments for reading and knitting.
What I have to really do in the next 24 hours is figure out why it seems that everything has expanded all over the house like an explosion of books and cds. And how, of course, I am going to manage to pack it all in the car since it really looks like I might have the Mole as a passenger going back to Germany.
His ship is still out there – not the first of the Tall Ships by any means, but certainly not the last.
It is the little things that matter, drive you nuts, just leave you standing there with your head shaking. Like why did the cleaning person shut all the doors in the place? Every last freaking door – 7 of them.
Ok, I might just need to back up a moment. Mentioned, didn’t I, that I am living in temp quarters that belong to the Mess?
It seems that staying here has the same support as the Mess – they are responsible for maintenance, That includes cleaning services. Really! The nice lady comes into scrub, polish and hoover a couple of times a week.
Perhaps she closes the doors as she finishes an area as a visual reminder a room is finished? I don’t have a clue.
But coming in last night to the front entry and being confronted by emptiness and closed doors was a bit upsetting. Not the way I left, making it obvious that someone had been there.
It also make the small place feel unfriendly & uninhabited. Just an empty location punctuated by white, shiny, closed doors.
Everything was quiet. I had to take a deep breath before cracking open a door and peering into the lounge.
After all – you shut doors to keep monsters in.
Making progress.
I started today with an initial to-do list composed equally of long and short term deadlines and problems.
Say – 23 things off the top of my head.
By noon I had managed to complete seven. The short, easy to do seven – top off mobile so I can use it again, pick up Hanne Falkenberg kits from the regional post station, get a J5 cable long enough to move the computer from wall drop to the top of my desk.
Those sort of things, with happily adding only two items on the list – both of which are legitimate current job.
The afternoon – well, I did find a scanner and have been busy turning certificates and other stuff into PDFs which will reside out there “in the cloud.” Till I am done with the army.
It has been a long day, I might just go home and spend the evening ripping more cds…
I did not mean to be quiet this long. I have sixteen days left in the UK. Since being back from my lovely vacation I have cleared housing, moved into temp quarters (spending no more than one night camping in my office), driven all over the place, done some knitting and otherwise been stressed!)
I have a couple of rooms and bathroom and sitting area. I don’t have any of the following: phone, telly (nothing new there), Internet, cooker, refrigerator or curtains that actually provide privacy.
Since I turned off BT, that also meant loss of my mobile. Found out the hard way that Vodophone on the pay-as-you-go does charge for certain inbound calls (like mobile international).
I have all the photos from the trip downloaded and am backing them up. Promise I will get them posted along with a catch up on the knitting.
In prep for deployment, I am ripping a lot of movies, some TV series and a ton of audio books onto a portable hard drive. I also have prepacked some small knitting projects and patterns so that the family can drop them in MPS every couple of weeks. That is, of course, unless I decide to take just one major project (Shetland shawl?).
I promise to do the catch ups, go visit your blogs and generally keep better in contact. An evening at the office? Feels like …Bosnia, Kuwait, Qatar…..
RSS
Recent Comments