Project 365: Week 15

Week 15. Just your standard daily grind with a fun family Sunday day out with the kids.  Oh, and my resident Chef has been cooking all manner of delicious things.

Day 99: Twilight / Sunset in the car park at work. Some quiet evening marking in my office whilst the boy plays ninja. Looking out over the water tower. This stores the water for the water engineering lab.

Day 100: It's time for a garden progress update. Today they build an octagonal something or other. Yesterday my entertainment was watching burly men manhandle heavy rocks. The consensus is it may be a raised garden bed, but a water feature would be cool too. The other occupants of my office think that it is highly appropriate that they built an Octagon outside the maths / stats peoples' office!

Day 101: Home-made Tortellini. My better half has been flexing his culinary muscles as he has some time at home. These were like beef and parmensan meatballs wrapped in pasta. Amazing!

Day 102: Authentic Dutch croquettes. The ugly ducklings of the Dutch Food world. They look even worse before they are crumbed. Imagine if you will a giant tray of these in my fridge last night pre-crumbing. A tray of brownish long things. Yes, there were toilet humour jokes galore from the boys. However, a couple of slices of fresh bread, some exotic mustard (sun dried tomato and garlic today) and a few hot croquettes squished in the middle. Sheer heaven. Going to give some to my sister as it's her birthday today.

Day 103: It should always look just as neat from the back. I'm on such a knitting hot streak at the moment. This is going to be an owl hat for middle daughter's European Adventure. Brushing up on my skills at intarsia knitting. This is just one evening's work! I started it last night whilst watching the footy. At hat in just a weekend is an achievable dream.

Day104 : End of a day immersed in a weird, weird world. We went to Melbourne Supanova to catch up with our favourite Aussie Fantasy author Kylie Chan and get our hands on a pre release copy of Book 7 in her magnificent series. We saw the Hoff in passing (twice) but I was more exited by seeing his car Kitt. Watched random people parade past dressed as half the cast of Star Wars, the men of the Night's Watch from Game of Thrones and a barrage of Disney Villanesses. Had lunch next to a group of random Sailor Scouts and watched a live Cos Play chess game where pretty much the entire pawns of one side were Doctor Who in his various incarnations. Oh and Kylie signed all our books and we chatted about the new season of Doctor Who.

Day 105: New artwork for my walls (Slightly squished after a day of being carried around. Kylie signed this for us yesterday. At the top it says, "The Larkins Rock". Thanks Kylie. You rock too. Mutual fan club!

Project 365: Week 14

Non-teaching week. Mid Semester Break. The tail end of the Easter Holiday. School holidays for the boy. Life is running at a different pace this week. Work, but no classes. Catch up, marking and some focused educational web design. No getting up kids up early and dragging them to the bus. Oh, and a lot of high quality knitting time!

Missed a few photo ops this week too... Lazy enough that I forgot to get the camera out.... (So I wish to formally apologise to Tuesday 2nd April, Friday 5th April  and Monday 8th April 2013. I'm sorry I didn't recognise your highlights this week.)

Day 93: Road tripping with the better half. The reason might be prosaic - medical appointments in 'the Big Smoke', but it's nice to spend time together. Half a new beanie knitted in the car and a romantic lunch in a shopping centre food court. Hey after 20+ years of marriage, romance is where you find it!

Day 94: I think I inadvertently collect statistics textbooks. If I wanted to be known as a mad collector of some sort or other, it definitely wouldn't be for this.... The pile of new and current textbooks on the floor of my office. Today I reviewed a book for a publisher to help plan for the new edition.

Day 96: Look a breeding pair of slouchy beanies! I made the one on the left for the boy as an Easter present. Future doctor daughter was home over Easter and took a shine to the beanie. We did have to search her bag when she left to make sure she hadn't quietly taken it home with her. So I made an identical one for her this week.

Day 97: I gave in. I made the jacket a vest... It looks OK but I miss the dream of the cardigan that wasn't meant to be...

Project 365: Week 13

It's Easter = a small break from the craziness of everyday life. A time for a deep breath and quality lazy time with family.

I missed a day this week. Wednesday was frantically busy and while I saw a scene worthy of a photo, a series of planned burns along the side of a country road at twilight as I was on my way to a tutoring job, I was on a tight timeline and it was too dark to photograph effectively by the time I returned home. So you'll just have to imagine black scorched earth with piles of glowing coals like a giant devil's campfire.

Day 85: The boy has a maths SAC tomorrow. We've been frantically cramming. No, I've been helping him learning how to use mathematical mapping for transformations of equations. The husky puppet was helping.

Day 87: The next chapter in the continuing saga of the garden outside my window. I think it is morphing into a rock garden. I'm sure there's more to come. This was the last day before the Easter break so it will be interesting to see what it looks like when I get back.

Day 88: We picked that pumpkin. It was about 9 kg. Today was Good Friday. This is traditionally a Pyjama day spent watching the telethon for the Royal Children's Hospital Good Friday appeal. The resident chef made delicious home-made pumpkin (and odds and ends of leftover roast veggie) soup for our lunch. I did briefly consider posting a photo of the Pyjama party on the couch but decided against exposing my blog readers to that sight.

Day 89: Easter Saturday. Helping the boy pad up for a contact sparring session. Lacing up the chest guards makes me think of lacing up the back of a corset top like on a debutante or wedding dress. The big tough guys didn't appreciate me repeating this observation as I was tying up their laces. For the boy we have to lace as tight as we can go. For a few of the older guys, there almost isn't enough string left to tie a bow at the end (and they're wearing the largest size chest protection)!

Day 90: It's Easter morning. The traditional Easter Egg Hunt is on. Even though the children are now young adults, this tradition must be maintained. However, clearly chocolate for Easter breakfast still makes for hyperactivity. One of the kids when vetting this picture for blog worthiness claims that there is something Gollum-Like in my eldest daughter's regard of her cup of eggs. "My Precious!"

Day 91: Easter Monday at the footy at the MCG with 76,299 other people! Here are the two teams lined up for the National Anthem at the beginning of the game. Hawthorn vs. Geelong games are somewhat of a family Easter tradition. Once again Hawthorn stuck to tradition and got narrowly beaten by Geelong (7 points this time). The Geelong supporters in my family rubbed it in. It was still a great day even if I am an unhappy hawthorn supporter yet again.