Month: February 2005

Today was my last day working for the Department of Education and the Arts. Not that I was ever involved with Arts mind, but that is currently the official name of the organisation. I’ve been there 4½yrs, which is quite a while for me—I’ve only been working full time since November 1999 after all. ‘Twas many fond farewells today. Also a celebration for David and Helen, two colleagues who met at work, fell in love and marry next week. Awww 🙂

As a farewell, I received a generous Amazon.com gift certificate (which cannot be used to purchase gift certificates). Time to shop!

Last weekend was holiday time! Why that weekend? Why not! The family travelled up to Alexandra Headlands on Friday afternoon. Had time for a visit to Kawana Shopping Centre first—Wendy’s hot dogs and perusals through JB Hifi and Big W—then check in and a walk along the beach for the evening. The kids splashed in the dumpy waves and guess who got wet fishing them out? 🙂

The place we stayed at had pay TV. Crikey. Despite the horrifyingly repetitive ads, we were lucky to catch a few neat things we’d not seen before, like an episode of Transformers: Energon and Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice film clip (featuring a very funky Christopher Walken). Yeah, we mostly watched video clips.

Went to the beach on Saturday morning and I even had a surf. By which I mean a swim. I don’t know how to surf. I don’t have a surfboard either. But it was fun! It was good to be able to take Daniel to the beach, more so since we could not over Christmas. I don’t believe I blogged it, but the poor little guy had a fractured wrist in plaster for three weeks through Christmas and New Year, and so trips to the beach (or anywhere it might get wet) were out.

A rest for all after the morning swim and then off to find tea. A quick walk around Chambers Island, then Red Rooster for tea—I had a Real Bacon Burger, yes, with lettuce!—and a walk from Alex Heads to Mooloolaba. Which brings me to the topic of this post.

What happened to the funny things? The “funny things” used to be a set of cool and kooky pieces of equipment along a path. There were push up bars, logs to hop between, a fort. They are all long gone now, but many a weekend evening was spent along that path when we were kids. Now all that remains is the figure 8, pictured below.

It’s still a nice walk. With ice creams at the end for the trip back. Hooray for holidays.

Back in August 2004, I posted about working closer to home… I was reading book one of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series at the time. Well, I didn’t get that job.

Here we are, almost 6 months later and I am almost finished book ten of the aforementioned Wheel of Time—and he is still writing more!—and today I can announce I have a new job! I don’t start for a couple of weeks, but my new job will be the swishly named Web Usability Officer for an amalgam of Queensland Government departments: Disability Services Queensland, Department of Communities and Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy. I think that’s right. Bit of a mouthful. Anyhow, in this job I get to be a champion! Looking forward to that 🙂

Unfortunately I will not be working any closer to home—I’ll be around the corner, oh, about another 2minutes walk from where I work now. Luckily the iPod shuffles arrived today, so I will have the extra music I need to go the distance!