Another year older

It was my birthday yesterday. Smithy gave me Sue Fear's biography, a sleeping bag liner and a beautiful carved marble frieze with 5 Buddhas in various poses. Lovely lovely lovely. We lolligagged around for a couple of hours, then surfed a bit on the net looking for maps of Tibet, before getting ready to go out.

The wine club we belong to was coincidentally having one of its tastings yesterday and we thought that a fine way to spend my burpday. A leisurely couple of hours sailing up and down the Brisbane River on the Kookaburra Queen (paddle steamer without steam), sampling some fine champagnes, whites, reds and scrumptious liqueurs.

Then it was off to New Farm Park to meet up with friends for coffee and a chinwag, which was really nice.

After a hot and sweaty walk over to Kangaroo Point and those wretched steps, we settled down with dinner and a couple more glasses of wine and watched some telly. A fine birthday!

And today Mum's card arrived with $50 tucked inside (ta Mum!) and a parcel from one of my sister's came too. That had a little lantern with candle in it (ta Lo!)

I'll have to go shopping on Wednesday and organise cards and gifts for Mum and Dad's birthdays - 8/11 and 14/11 respectively. Yep...3 Scorpios in the family!

Movie time!

Hooray! Hooray! I have finally been able to make workable DVDs of the films we took whilst trekking in Nepal last year. So now we have a little collection of homemade movies on DVD! Annapurna Circuit, Kathmandu and Everest Region. Up til now, we've only been able to view the films on the computer.

We're particularly pleased about the Everest one because it originally seemed that the footage had been corrupted - lines of pixelation running through the scenes. But, I gave it another try capturing it to computer and this time it was clear! There must have been some dust in the camera the first time I tried to capture it. So now we have a great little movie of our trek to Gokyo and Kalar Pattar!

So now, I'm looking at transferring some old videos onto DVD. And we recently bought software so that we can record our vinyl LPs to the computer then burn them to CD. Smithy and I are slowly working our way through our record collections. Once we've finished we'll be able to put the LPs into storage under the house. We have great fun making labels and case covers as well as going on quite a trip down memory lane as we listen to the LPs.

Spring has sprung

Seems that summer is already here after just a week or two of lovely spring weather. In comes October and increased water restrictions and the temperature soars into high 30s - Celcius, that is...90+ Fahrenheit. And we've had the first bushfires of the season.

But the good news is.....there's cricket on the telly!!!! Australia against the world and beating them in 2 one-day matches, with one more one-dayer and a 6-day test still to come. The games have been played under the closed roof of the Telstra Dome in Melbourne, so can someone explain to me why Andy Symonds had his usual sunblock on his lips???

October's arrival has meant a step up in our training program. There are now only 340 days until we leave for Tibet. So now we're walking 5 days a week (well nights as it's been far too hot before sunset to step outside!) on our Kangaroo Point circuit, which is about 7km in distance and includes a gruelling 106 steps up the side of a cliff. Oh the straining calves, heaving lungs and wobbly legs as we struggle to the top! But soon, soon we'll be trotting up those steps with no bother at all.

We've also cut back on the alcohol consumption - enjoying a wine or two only on Friday and Saturday nights - and are eating a little less as we both want to lose 5-8kg. So far, it seems to be working cos the scales are telling me I've lost 1kg already!