Up in Holy smoke!

I have never spent new years eve in Armidale before and I have to say I thought it would be pretty crap in terms of fireworks.

But I was mistaken, Armidale has super fireworks and what makes them super is that they are let off by a priest who also happens to have a pyrotechnics license. The council a local pub and others contribute to the cost. The playing fields are roped off and Father Anthony let’s it rip at 9pm and midnight. He has to be the coolest priests ever. There was a lot of fireworks, infact. they went off for 10 minutes straight, all different types. I love fireworks and being soo close to them being launched was really cool.

Father Anthony calls himself ‘Holy Smoke’ what a super dooper Priest!!!

In other news I had a fiddle with my parents label-er today and made a special label for them.

Christmas Day and my face

Yesterday morning at Church Oscar got fed up with the service and said ‘that way, toys’ a lot which is him saying ‘someone take me to the creche I want to play with toys’. So I took Oscar to the creche with him directing me with lots of  ‘that way’.

He played with balls and toys with lights and a little interaction with other kids but not too much, he was too busy to make friends. Eventually he deicded to go up and down the slide, while he was doing this I noticed on the pin board that there was a couple of flyers that I had made back in the day working for a local community organisation. So I decided to take a closer look at my handy work. One of the flyers I remember was made in a bit of a ruch and I ended up putting myself in the image modeling some OP shop goodness as time was short.

It would seem I have been attacked.

This attack was followed at Christmas lunch by Jenny’s Aunty hiding 5 cent coins in my ice cream which I almost swallowed one of.

Then last night Tom and I ruined Christmas with our faces for 12 unlucky web viewers.

Howie’s Christmas message or not

I couldn’t be bothered writing a Christmas message this year.

Instead I’m doing a live webstream show with Tom.

8pm EST tongiht

Happy Birthday Robert Oscar Howie

computer change

I sold my MacBook Pro and got an iMac.

why?

Well I wasn’t using it as a laptop anymore and the whole reason I had it was for work stuff needing to be able to run presentations and stuff out and about. And if I ever get a new job chances are the job will come with a computer and companies don’t like you using your personal computer for work stuff so it made sense to change to a desktop.

Probably not an interesting post for you but it is a post none the less.

6th sense???

Last night Tom had his HSC party. 10 years after we finished school he was finally going to open his results.

Tom got 63.15 in his HSC. I guessed that he would get 63.30.

If we were both girls we would probably get our periods at the same time.

daddy’s doodle, playdough & the claw

Bright and early on Saturday morning Jenny drove Oscar and I to the airport so we could go on a little plane to Armidale to spend the night with Grandmama and Grandpa. We arrived at the airport and I spent all our life savings on a trolley so i could get Oscar and and all our bits and bobs to the check in counter.

Once checked in we headed down towards the departure gates, I was busting to wee so we made a quick stop to the baby change room in the hope there was a big toilet cubicle that Oscar could stand in while I relieved myself. Because it was just me traveling with him I couldn’t take his pram. as well as car seat, cot and suitcase. We got into the toilet and I asked Oscar to stand next to my backpack and he could open the zippers if he wanted to. With my back facing him I began my wee, halfway into my wee the following 2 things happened:

• Over the PA came the announcement ‘This is the final call for passengers traveling on Qantaslink to Armidale, please head directly to gate 58′ If you know T2 at Sydney, 58 is the alst gate and is a long way from where you go through security. So that got me in a bit of a paanic.
• Then the second thing that happened is a little head appeared poking around my side and made the following announcement “Daddy… doodle… wee wee…Daddy….doodle”

He has to learn sometime I guess how to wee standing up but I wasn’t emotionally prepared for that education at that moment.

We walked rather quickly to the gate, down the stairs and on to the bus that drove us out to our little plane.

Once on the plane Oscar got a bit impatient with us sitting on the tarmac not going anywhere so started saying ‘door close, go go go’

Eventually we did go and Oscar had a good time on the plane. With Qantas the only airline that flies to Armidale I was looking forward to my inflight snack. Eventually the lady with the apron came past and handed me a tiny biscuit, a biscuit!!!! one crappy little biscuit. does she know how much the bloody tickets cost??????

Landing in Armidale a very hungry passenger we where greeted at the terminal by a very happy Grandmama and Grandpa! Oscar was a bit shy at first but quickly warmed again to his grandparents.

In our quick little visit Oscar packed in playing in the pool and sand pit, reading books, playing with play dough, riding a little bike, avoiding his nap,  throwing balls in the bushes, chasing the cat, exploring cupboards, picking strawberries, rearranging grandpas shop and having a good overnight sleep.

After packing up and some more playtime we headed to Armidale airport with Grandmama to begin our journey home.

We had a great afternoon, night and morning with the oldies and it was a bit sad leaving so soon, but aslo exciting as I was flying home to see U2!!!!

Jenny picked us up from the Airport and a very excited Oscar spent most of the trip home shouting ‘Harbour tunnel”

A quickish stop at home to give Oscar dinner, Jenny whipped out her boob (related to Oscar’s dinner not just burst of U2 excitement)  Put him to bed then head to homebush.

The plan was to drive to concord west then walk to olympic park.

After spending 30 mins on Ryde road moving less than a km we changed plan and diverted to epping where we parked and caught the train to concord west to then walk. No chance of us seeing Jay Z but we didn’t care. We got to the stadium and up to our seats with about 15 minutes to spare.

Pretty pleased with our seats we sat down and waited for the show.

We saw the boys enter the stadium and walk to the back of the stage and begin to rock the night away, the sound for the first song was terrible, all distorted and muffled, but they fixed that.

The night was going really well until Bono decided to introduce the band, I’m not sure why he does this all the time but he tries to be spontaneous  and make up witty roles that Larry, Adam and Edge do. Last night it was office roles and when he got to himself he said he was the janitor of the company and all I could think was, at least as the janitor he could clean up all the crap that comes out his mouth.

I love Bono but sometimes he does talk some serious crap.

As a show it was amazing, they played all the good ones with pride and passion. Real entertainers and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the biggest sound to ever hit Sydney, especially the deep deep base that could probably have been felt in broken hill. Brilliant!!!!

After the show ended we stood around to get a photo of the stage for one last time under light then it was time to walk back to Concord West and get home.Jenny looked up what time the train would be coming and figured we had 18 minutes to get from the stadium to concord west.

I have never walked so fast in my life, sweat was dripping from my face, I was wheezing and all I heard for 18 minutes was ‘Come on robert” as Jenny pulled away in front of me.

Arriving at the just on time. Only to read the board and see that the train doesnt actually come for another 9 minutes. So there was no need for our midnight powerwalk. But if you are wondering it is possible to get from the stadium to the station in 18 minutes, it is, if you are willing to forgo functioning internal organs and don’t mind sweating from every crack and crevasse possible.

And that was my last 2 days.

boa-(s)-ting

Most of you will never know the feeling of owning your own boat, it’s only people of a certain class that get the thrill of wrapping an alpaca cardigan around your shoulders as you go down to the waters edge to watch your first vessel take to the water. Thankfully I am of that class, and recently purchased my first water going vessel.

With my very successful career and business contacts in the boating industry it was only natural that I would need a second vessel, one is just not enough, I caught the bug.

Today my second vessel was launched alongside my first.

Will I require a third? Well if my career continues in it’s current upward direction then of course I will.

Become a doctor online for just $25

The internet is going to turn me into a hypochondriac, In the last week I have diagnosed myself with a mild stroke and a brain tumor.

Last Friday I had the pleasure of  spending the night with a migraine, I was sitting at my computer happily watching an episode of ‘Breaking Bad’ when one of the charters walking across screen disappeared from my view and I started getting a strong headache. This is a common onset of a migraine for me, vision goes all dodgy, well dodgyer than it already is, sometimes a few sweats as well.

So I decided it was best to go to bed.

The next day I woke up and my eye still felt dodgy, it was definitely not it’s usual not very good self. The headache was gone but the eye troubled me all day. Infact a week later it still didn’t feel right so I went to see my doctor. Not that I needed to see a doctor as google had diagnosed me several times during the week with a varying array of disorders, diseases and illnesses. But figured I would go and test my doctor and see what he could come up with without using Google.

I should have guessed it, without the power of google the doctor could simply diagnose ‘It’s probably nothing but because your eyes are already stuffed it might be best to get them checked out’. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I knew more than him and that actually I had probably had a mini stroke but not noticed it because i’m so tough.

So on friday afternoon I went to the eye specialist man who I think may not really be a specialist and just got his qualifications online for $50 and made up his name from a middle Eastern kebab shop menu board.  He did all sorts of tests and put my face in lots of machines and shoved torch lights into my eyes and put drops in that made my pupils dilate bigger than my head. I did however notice that a lot of his machines while they looked expensive and genuine had floppy disk drives on the side of them. So now I’m convinced he made these machines out of bits and bobs collected from council clean ups and they only thing they actually measure is the gullibility of his patients.

He said there was nothing wrong with my eyes and that they are all the same stats as recoded using the same machines last year, of course it’s the same, your magical floppy disk driven toasters with flashing lights arnt going to gibe yo a different reading!!!!!!!

Anyway he wants me to go back in a couple of weeks to see if things have changed, of course he does, and of course i’ll go.

And yes my eye does still feel dodgy.

I should probably also clarify that my Doctor and Eye Specialist are very good at their jobs and I trust them a lot and that in the words of Captain Tony Abbot,

“sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks”