Monday update

Hi everyone,

How are things?  It's been an intense but somewhat frustrating day here.  I wanted to be out if bed just in 5am to squeeze in a quick 20km run before breakfast.  It didn't quite work, and so I was out of bed at 6am which meant a little better than 10kms (http://www.dailymile.com/people/sdtuc2/entries/25325553).  I'm not sure how I'm going to get in a 20km and a 30km prior to the marathon.  Hmmm.

I was at work a bit before 9am.  I got through most of the stuff on the to do list, but without feeling like I was actually achieving very much.  I dunno, I just felt kind of ... sedated.  Healthy lunch of fruit and nuts.  Does that make any sense?  Well, no matter.  As I said, it was a tolerably productive day, and I found time in the late afternoon to rattle off the updates to the other day's casenote for Ag Law News.

Back at the Casa a bit before 7pm.  Parentals in doing ok although being cooped up together is not making them overly happy.  TopGear rerun in the evening.  Reading up on real property law.

Catching up

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the long delay between posts.  I don't have an excuse: really the closest I get to an explanation is that as I get one part of my life in order, I seem to drop the ball in another.  Well, no matter. Onward and hopefully upward!

Typing this on my phone on a Saturday morning while I fail to write an article, a casenote, a submission to a government inquiry and to do a crossword puzzle.  

Just typing that last sentence has actually helped motivate me I must say!  At least I've gotten a few other longstanding things (doctor, dentist, taxes, will, insurance) sorted or on the high road to being sorted of late.  The thing is not to allow your life to drift ...

... or put entries to one side until you can finish them while waiting at the chemists (getting my Pristiq filled).

Anyway, it's been a productive day so far.  Some farm work and working on that casenote for the Agricultural Law News.  And I found some more little presents to send to Grace and Rachel.  

Feeling a little flat at the moment, but i don't expect it to last.  One of the few drawbacks of living in the Goulburn Valley, I think, is that it makes being content a little too easy, as if there's less to strive for.  This, to me, is a little horrifying: like being buried alive.  Which is why I need to make myself keep writing and running and trying things.  If I stop, I'll stop being who I am.  I may become someone I don't especially want to be. And I'm a little worried I may become old and bitter as well, and thinking about lost chances and such.  This may or may not be related to being halfway through my allotted three-score-years-and-ten.

I'll post this before my battery gives out.  But my next job is doing a bucket list.  Any suggestions?

Morning Post

Hi everyone,

Short post before I get the day underway.  I'm hoping today will be less of an emotional demolition derby than yesterday.  Emotions are good, but draining.  There are moments where you begin to think that, maybe, the Cybermen actually had it right and that the Cylons were probably on the wrong track when they started messing with human emotions!

Things are good at work.  Still really enjoying it, even if my productivity has been down a bit this week.  Hmm.

Will have the weekend coming up to myself.  Thinking about going to vote in Euroa, and then sticking around to watch part of the Shepparton Swans / Euroa Magpies match.  Also have a boatload of study to do and a couple of articles and case notes to prepare.

Anyway, we'll see.  I'd better get underway; hope your days are going well! 

Federal Election - Five days from polling day

I spent this evening reading today's Financial Review.  A big whack of the coverage followed on from the official launch of the Labor campaign at the weekend, and nearly all the pundits were administering the last rites to the government.  Notwithstanding the energy of Labor staffers travelling with the PM, I think it's safe to say that the only Labor operatives whose hearts are still in it are those too young to remember a defeat.  I think that the pundits are right in their predictions: there will be a change of government and the only question is by how much.

I'm mildly troubled, though, that I can't sense any enthusiasm in the electorate for the world beyond Saturday.  The Liberal campaign in general, and Tony Abbott in particular, has been rigorously disciplined and controlled and determined not to frighten the voters.  No doubt this has been a sound strategy, but it's produced a campaign of mind numbing blandness.

The minor parties haven't managed their usual job of livening things up.  The Greens have hit all the usual high notes of more money for everyone and only very fuzzy ideas for the economy.  The Palmer United Party has begun advertising in the last week, but its ads consist mainly of the Peter Griffin-esque Palmer rambling to the camera about tax policy.  That party is a dreadful wasted opportunity: a backer with the money and intelligence to put out new, or at least interesting, ideas, and all he created as an expensive vanity project which will pull about =/<3% of the vote tops.  And predictably the Katter Australian Party remains persuaded that being pissed off is a policy and that the world can return to 1955.

In short, I'm a little troubled.  The voters do indeed seem to be lurking with baseball bats to punish a chronically unstable and erratic government.  But once the deed is done, I'm not sure anyone knows what should happen next.