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.

Where did the days go...

Can't believe it's been over a month since we last posted.  I guess it's definitely time for an update then.

• First and foremost, we finally sold the house in Lapstone!!! It settled last week, so that is a massive weight off; not only losing the mortgage but the cash injection for the house build will be appreciated.
• Last Saturday was Huon Show Day, which I thought was fantastic because they had goats AND miniature donkeys.  Derek enjoyed the farm equipment, but is not going to get the ride on mower he pointed out, or the quad bike for that matter. As Tony quite rightly pointed out he has had enough toys for the time being, and we realised we hadn't even mentioned the MacBook Pro on the blog.
• We had our first set of visitors the weekend before, Derek's sister and her family.  It reinforced what we've already come to realise, the cottage is quite small; so bring on the new house!!
• We're still waiting on Council to get back to us on the development plans for the house, they have about three weeks left to do so.
• Derek successfully completed his chainsaw course today, and didn't even bleed.  He had a great time cutting up bits of wood for the day; at least now I'll feel a little more comfortable about us getting one (although that is a toy he can wait for).

Apart from all of that things continue along down here. I'm still enjoying the job, although the national agenda work is a little frustrating to say the least.  Derek nearly has the back fence completed, we will post more photos when that finally happens.

Two Weddings and a hole in the backyard

We've had a busy couple of days, and we're feeling very sleep deprived at the moment, so if this post makes no sense you'll have to forgive me.

Two Weddings

Why the sleep deprivation? I hear you ask. Well we've recently returned from a long weekend in Perth for a wedding.  An old friend of Derek's (in that they have known each other for a long time, not a commentary on his age) named Sambo (well actually named Ian, but called Sambo) married the lovely Kate on Friday.

It was a beautiful ceremony, very sweet, and we had a great night.  It was really good for us to finally meet Kate, and their gorgeous little girl Violet as well.  One of the problems of being a continent away from friends unfortunately is that you just don't get to see enough of each other.  But we did get to meet them and be part of their very special occasion, and that was great.

We also caught up with other old friends of Derek's while we were over there (again a comment on the length of time they've known each other).  All in all a fantastic few days, just very tiring with all of the time zone changes, long flights and the red-eye last night.

But, as you can see in the title of this post, that was not the only wedding. Matt, my brother, married his lovely fiancee, Pia, last Friday as well.  This was a registry office occasion on Friday morning, I won't go into all the reasons why they opted not to have a big ceremony, suffice to say families are interesting parts of our lives :-)  So a big congratulations to Matt and Pia as well, I'm sure that you will continue to be as happy together as you have been for the last few years.  And remember Pia, you're a Dunn now, "one of us, one of us" :-)

The hole in the backyard

As some of you may know, part of the treechange will involve us finally getting a pet (or a few pets really, but I will talk about the goats and miniature donkey in later posts).  In order to achieve this we need to dog proof the backyard of our current house.  Derek has started this process by digging a hole in the backyard, or to be more precise, digging a step out so we can put a retaining wall and fence from the house to the shed.

Now the fun part of putting in posts, retaining wall, fence and garden - and Derek thought digging it was hard work :-)

Not an insignificant amount of work, given the concrete that was on top of half of it.

The ute finally starts doing some real man's work!

From this we have learned a few things:

• Number 1 - we are very glad that the soil classification on the land found very little clay, as the Huonville house is on a dolomite clay, which is apparently a b!tch to dig.
• Number 2 - when people renovate houses they cut some bizarre corners. The new downpipe was not actually connected to the old drain pipe, instead there was a half metre drop - lazy.
• Number 3 - concrete is not easy to break up, and even harder to get rid of in Huonville - luckily we found someone who is looking for clean fill.
• Number 4 - not really a new lesson, but Derek still continues to bleed with every handyman activity. I'm thinking we might need to get him to start donating blood now so there are reserves for the house build :-)

We'll post a lot more photos when the wall and fence actually start getting built - and then there will be the photos of the puppy when we finally get him/her.

Apple Blossoms

As a footnote, we haven't posted a photo of the apple tree in our backyard, see below.

Pretty apple blossoms - although it does attract bees

The whole valley is starting to really bloom at the moment, given this is apple and cherry country that is not surprising.  We'll have to drive down to Cygnet next weekend and see how the cherry blossoms are going, I think they will be spectacular.