Our New Addition

For those of you who don't know, one of the things we had planned to do when we moved down here was to get a dog. The plan was to rescue a pound puppy, and we've been keeping an eye on the RSPCA Adopt-a-pet and Hobart Dogs' Homes site since just after Christmas.

A couple of weeks ago we were heading up north for Agfest, yes it was as exciting as it sounds and I'm sure Derek will write all about it, we found a puppy we thought would be right in Devonport. So after an exciting morning of looking at heavy equipment, water tanks and bogans we headed up to the RSPCA.

Long story short, we decided that Lily would be the perfect addition to our family so we adopted her and picked her up last Saturday. She is a Springer Spaniel/Labrador cross and is very pretty. She is 8 months old and has obviously had a bit of training, although she forgets it when excited - which she is very often.

We had a very sleepless night on Saturday night, but we think we've resolved the problems and last night was much better.

Lily has been keeping Derek company in the ute and up on the land for the past couple of days. She will be spending a lot of time with Derek while he is building the house, and hopefully we socialise her with the german shepherd next door quite soon so he doesn't have to keep hiding her in the car.

Building Permit

We finally have jumped through all of the initial hoops and we now have a Building Permit!!!

This means that we can start the slab work next week, as planned, which is extremely exciting and a little bit daunting at the same time. So more to come shortly, on this and a few other things.

It's official - Derek is never allowed to pick another movie!

Supporting the Australian film industry be damned I say! In some sort of delusional mindset last night I let Derek choose a DVD, which we are currently watching. I should know better, after the debacle that was Drop Dead Sexy but I let him pick anyway.

So what is the movie you need to avoid at all cost to your sanity - Arctic Blast! It isn't even finished yet, but I really want the -80 degrees Fahrenheit fog to kill everyone in the movie, now so I don't have to tolerate any more sh!tty acting and moronic dialogue.

What's worse is that it is mainly set in Hobart, so that should make it a little more fun. Instead we notice all of the geographical and social anomalies - like the fact that it is a school day but Salamanca Markets are on!!!! I can't wait for the end, especially since it appears that we're all going to be saved by the AMERICAN in the movie! Right now I'm begging for a rift in the ozone layer - make it stop :-)

Where has the time gone?

No we haven't dropped off the face of the earth, it may just feel like it at times :-) It's been over three months since we posted so there is a bit to cover off.

Visitors
We've had a number of people come and visit, which has been fantastic. Recently that has included Derek's parents and then three days later my parents - which was probably too much of a good thing in such a short period, but nice nonetheless.

My Job
Things are going well in Housing Tasmania, I'm really enjoying my job - although I could spend a little less time with some of the National agencies. I've been asked to assist our new Executive Director (she was the Director of Housing) sorting out the structure and strategy for joining Housing with Disability and Community Services, which is an exciting opportunity for the next month or so.


The Current House
After waiting forever to try to get our roof replaced we've finally found someone else to do the job. The tin has been delivered and if the rain ever stops we'll have a new roof very soon. It's a good thing that it wasn't actually leaking! It's one of the things that we're slowly getting used to, we came here to have a more laid back lifestyle we just didn't realise how that would work with the tradies :-)


The New House
We've had some progress with the house. Early in the new year we did bulk excavation on the block, turning it from our lovely bush block to a moonscape.

 

We put 90 tonnes of gravel down for the driveway and future site of Derek's shed.

Fortunately our neighbour has an excavator, a really big one, so the whole process was made a little easier.

On the plus side it is a start to the whole process.

The plans have been signed off by the engineer and are now in with the Council. We should hear back next week on the approval for that, then we need to get the 'Special Plumbing Permit' approved the week after and we're ready to start on the slab.

And, probably the biggest progress to date, we now have a house number - 150.

So that gets us pretty much up to date I'd say. We'll try to be more regular with this in future - assuming I can ever get Derek to do a blog post :-)

Progress with the house (both of them)

Derek has almost completed the fence that he has been building which will allow us to get a puppy dog.  The gate went in yesterday, and once he has painted it I will post up some more photos.

We're in the final throes of sorting out the house plans. Nigel will finish the working drawings shortly, so we can get on with the processes to get it into Council for our building permit.  Once we have the new floor plan we will post it up here.

In the meantime, Derek's done one last clear of the block so we can mark the house out for the bulk excavation early in the new year.  I'm sure we'll have plenty of photos to share from that process, big machines moving around heaps of soil and knocking down trees. Needless to say that Derek is looking forward to the process.

For now though we are preparing for our first krismas alone together. It is not feeling very krismassy down here though, maybe we should have gotten a tree :-)

Sea Shepherds

One of the things I hadn't really thought about was how busy Hobart harbour is for boats that work in the Southern Ocean. We were in town last weekend and noticed that the Sea Shepherd ships were in port. Unfortunately the stealth ship wasn't with them, but they were quite impressive.

The Steve Irwin (the one at the back) is a pretty impressive piece of kit with a helicopter and a rubber dinghy from hell.

So Hobart does have its own level of excitement, just a little different than we're used to.

Mr Peugeot is not happy

Our first bit of negative excitement occurred last Wednesday on my home from work.

Not 1 minute from home I was t-boned at the intersection on the other side of the Huon River.  The guy was taking off from the intersection, so thankfully the damage was limited - but he still caused over $9,000 damage.

We've also discovered the one drawback of a european car - we may be waiting for the replacement door to come from France.  There is a chance we'll have it back at the end of next week, but it is likely to be the week after.

And yes, this means that on those days that Derek can live without it I am driving the ute to work!

Please be fixed soon.