I'm Back

Hi there, I have to apologise for it being so long between blogs.

The end of the year and the start of this one has been mad.

Last year was a case of study study study as i have finally completed my Diploma in Massage (jumps for Joy). This was rather a lot of work (I honestly studied less for my Engineering Degree) but I got there and now have a peice of paper to prove it :) So I now am a qualified remedial massage therapist, Senior member of the Association of Massage Therapists (AMT) and i am waiting on some health funds to come through (woohoo).

Tied in with all this have a been a few events that have been rather significant.

• My wife went on a cruise in October and the whole group had an absolute ball until they came home and one of her friends lost her 18 year old son due to misadventure the very next morning (he decided to climb a power pole not far from where we live). That was all very traumatic for all concerned.
• As far as a previous blog my wife had lost her jewellery at a gym, quite a substantial amount and the gym was rather unsympathetic and unhelpful. It then took us $1300 to find out that we didn't have a legal case :(
• My Wife works for the state energy company which the state government was orignally going to sell off completely. The Unions were powerful and rolld the premier, the tradeoff was to sell off the retail side which has a weaker union, this was unopposed and the state government got a payout. The handover date is in march just before the next election. There is apparently a 5 year guarentee on their jobs but that doesn't say they will have the same work conditions. I know that the company that has bought them out has hours that only go to 6pm whereas they curently go to 8pm. It will be interesting to find out what will happen.
• On Christmas eve the pool pump decided to die which was not great timing (although we did manage to keep it blue for a month without the pump until the end of year came and went.
• We received a phone call on New years eve from our bank asking to verify a funds transfer...someone had hacked into our internet banking and transferred our mortgage payment out. The bank was great and we managed to sort everything out. We have had to add extra security to our internet banking including a security token. This got a bit scary. Ive antivirus already but I was advised of an anti spyware/anti phishing program and when i ran it, there were ablut 300 programs. The kids when they on the internet click on all sorts of things, i may have from time to time opened up an email or opened up a twitter link. It's hard to say where it came from. SO now i am more wary. i rund anti spyware pretty much every day.
• The oven died a couple of weeks ago, no it isn't old, it's one of those new fandangled wide ovens we put in when we renovated our kitchen almost 3 years ago. Thankfully before the 3 year warranty runs out in march (it has already been through an element). A switch shorted out the switchboard.
• The end of our street which has forever been a nightmare especially at school times. It was originally going to be a set of lights, then the state government decided to change that to a roundabout (expletives here) then it was changed back to a set of lights. Well works have started and it's a mess at the end of the street.
• Oh and i forgot my password and tried hard to remember what it was. I remembered only a few das ago :)

So with the return of school, i have a little more time to blog.

I'm not sure what the next year will hold :)