Rebooting for 2017

Hi everyone,

I mentioned the other day that this is the time of year when I usually review my life.  The time between Christmas and New Year is ideal for considering what needs to be rebooted, what kept, and what left behind.

Image from here

It's a work in progress; this is what I have so far.

Family

There's a few different aspects to this one.

Children

I don't know whether to change anything where Grace and Rachel are concerned.  I suspect not.  They're happy and thriving with their life as it is and I'm a realist.  If I become more involved in their lives there's a realistic chance I'll make them worse and not better.  This is unacceptable.

Divorce

One of my projects in 2017 will be maintaining a stasis in 'divorced' life.  The inverted commas are partly because as far as I know I'm still legally married even though the marriage is long-since kaput.  Mostly the words are in inverted commas because I can't disagree with the Church's teaching on marriage's indissolubility as a sacrament.  I can't see any grounds I would have for ignoring it.  This means that I also simply can't remarry or repartner without committing adultery.  I don't like this reality.  It's not how I wanted my life to look.  My job is simply to make peace with it.

I'll write more about this at some point, but one thing I am disappointed by is the Church's fairly crummy support for divorcees.  There's a lot of words about 'support' but the only particularly concrete suggestion I've seen is using us for volunteer work for the church community as a replacement for loving one's spouse.  Volunteering is laudable and desirable, of course, but it's hard not to feel that one is being directed to community service like some type of petty offender.

Parents

Regular readers will know that my own parents aren't young but remain fiercely independent.  There's little for me to do but support them as best I'm able.  In practical terms this means I'll be up here in the Goulburn Valley for the next year or so unless there's a remarkably strong reason for me to go elsewhere.

Work

Paid work

Australia is glutted with lawyers already and another couple of thousand will hit the market this year after completing their degrees in 2016.  Essentially all will be younger and cleverer than me.  I'll keep my practising certificate so I can continue volunteering at the legal service but there's no point planning a legal career.  I had my chance for that when I worked at Hall & Wilcox and at Thomsons Lawyers.  Most people only get one chance at a brilliant career.  I had two.  I choked each time and can't claim to have been hard done by.

What else do I do?  Retraining is not an option.  I can't afford to be retrained myself and no government support is available.  I can't keep scraping by with catchpenny labouring work: it helps me maintain my self respect but not much more.  As I see it the only resource I can call on is a knack for writing on pretty near any subject.  So, this year my effort will be to write and publish as much as I'm able to.  If any of it can be sold for actual money, so much the better.

Annotating and cross-referencing various #books off my shelves. Because that's just how I roll. #nerdlife #historygeek #artsdegree #sigh #whatwentwrong

A photo posted by Stephen Tuck (@sdtuc2) on Dec 27, 2016 at 3:23pm PST

Volunteering

I'm already doing three different lots of volunteering with SES, the Legal Service and the Red Cross (four if you count the blood bank).  I don't think I can really take more on, so my task is to do what I'm doing better.

My two year term as SES Unit Controller will expire in late 2017.  At some point I'll need to decide whether to seek reappointment.  It's a terrific role, but it's also demanding and it's not fair on other people to 'hog' it either.

Things I didn't anticipate doing before 9am: discussing the philosophy of Albert Camus with a 91 year old! Love being a #telecross volunteer 😂 #philosophy #redcross #lovewhatido #volunteering @redcrossau

A photo posted by Stephen Tuck (@sdtuc2) on Dec 22, 2016 at 2:47pm PST

Health and Fitness

Notwithstanding the Christmas binge, I'm more or less on track to get my weight down to 75kgs.  I still want to get my resting heart rate down a bit further however, which means I have every reason to kep running in 2017!  I'd like to enter a few races this year, in addition to the Emergency Services Games half-marathon; I guess that'll depend on having spare money for race fees.  At any rate, this part of my life is broadly on track.

What are your plans for the new year?

Cakes, ducks and blood pressure

Hi everyone,

 

Updating the blog again.  I was just dead tired last night.  Sorry!

 

It's been a busy couple of days.  Work has been keeping me well occupied, including on some genuinely interesting jobs, which is a massive bonus.  Although I was a bit disappointed at work by this:

 

 

Why was I disappointed by this, you ask?  Because it was a bake sale. Normally bake sales are a good thing: aside from being a source of goodies, the money raised usually goes to the Lower Bullamakanka Football-Netball Club, or the Bandywallop East Fire Brigade, or the Woop Woop Red Cross Auxiliary.  What was this one to support?  One of the business' departments wants money to buy decorations to support its entry in the corporation's Christmas decoration competition.

 

 

The colossal tragedy of Syria is being played out this festive season.  The world seems richer than ever in human misery.  Virtually any number of humanitarian causes need donations.  To do 'fundraising' for as trifling a thing as a corporate Christmas decoration competition seems shameful.

 

Here endeth the Ebenezer Scrooge moment.  Thursday was otherwise good.  SES training took the form of a major cleanup and working bee at the shed, which now looks a lot more spruced up and tidy than it did before.  I have to say, there was much hilarity when a pager message came in for an "animal emergency": there were two ducks and fifteen ducklings on the footpath opposite the lake in Shepparton.  I think the caller was worried they'd try and walk across the road and get run over.  This was not an unreasonable concern, but somehow we're not allowed to fire up the lights and the sirens and drive under emergency vehicle conditions for wandering waterfowl!  Maddie, who was duty officer, managed a straight face and called the member of the public who reported it, thanked them and explained that it was really something for the City Ranger to attend to and gave the number.  I'm pretty sure there's no course SES offers for dealing with duck related emergencies!

 

Ducks: not normally a source of public emergenciesImage from here

 

Today was another day where I kept my shoulder to the wheel pretty effectively, although I headed out at lunch to deliver to the opp shop some things that were considered surplus to requirements while cleaning out the unit (old ring binders, things like that).  The old boy had asked me to come back to the farm while there was still daylight so we could load the stock-crate onto the truck.  I was back here by 6pm, but oddly neither he nor mum were here.  They didn't get back till a bit after seven.  Troublingly, mum had had a spike in her blood pressure and so he'd taken her into town to see the doctor.  It seems she'd been worrying about a few things and then she saw the measurements go up and it all kind of fed on itself.  I've stressed that if she's here alone and feels funny, the ambulance service is there for a reason, and I think she gets that.  Not so sure about the old boy though.  He volunteered to cook dinner tonight.  Notwithstanding circulatory alarm bells, dinner consisted of fried potatoes, fried tomatoes, fried bacon and fried steak-pieces.  I really really need to cook more for the parental units!

 

 

 

Not much more to add.  Tomorrow is the last part of the rescue boat course, and Sunday, God willing, I'll have a good long skype with the girls and maybe get a run in.  Hoping it all works out!

 

More soon.  Hope you're all doing well.

In which I buy shoes

Hi everyone,

It's been an uneven sort of day here.  The weather's stayed humid and damp pretty well all day, but the rain was confined to a short downpour in the afternoon.

Work was reasonably busy, or at least steady, and frankly I'm grateful to have things to actually do all day.  Although it was a little tiresome to be spending a decent whack of the day working on budget-and-expenditure reporting for my unit.  It's a task where we inevitably wind up needing to call someone in from the finance team to explain it all.  This is because (a) my predecessor didn't get around to explaining this part of the job before she left, (b) I have no training in accounting save for a unit on trust accounts as part of my law degree 15 years ago, and (c) the company's accounting systems have been rather unevenly merged, split, retitled and bodged together over many years and have a fair degree of mislabelled or overlapping data, all of which means that (d) I find it difficult to make much sense of it and even more difficult to explain any of it to my boss.  Frankly, reporting time at the start of every month usually gives me a Calvin & Hobbes moment -

Image from here

On the plus side, I was able to attend to another matter today.  As I've mentioned, this weekend is the first half of the rescue boat crew course, which will involve quite a bit of time on the Waranga Basin.  Boat duties require us to wear sneakers instead of our usual boots.  Rather than wear my runners, I went up to the opp shops to see if I could get a pair of second hand ones that can be used, drowned and generally destroyed.  Because both shops happened to only have football boots (not really suitable) and women's sneakers, I found myself doing the Cinderella thing, trying to find a shoe that looked like passably neutral (rather than, say, very pink) and then pulling off my boots to try them on.  Happy to report that I was able to get two pairs (which should take care of the next weekend as well) as well as an extra use-it-and-lose-it cap for the princely sum of $7.50.  I'm happily calling that a win!

Not much more to add.  The old boy has gone down to the Peninsula for a clearing sale, but Little Sister is coming up so there's someone here with mum during the day while I'm on the course.

Hope all your days are starting well.  We have a late finish tomorrow evening so I may not get a chance to post tomorrow night, but hopefully I can get you some good photos while we're out and about.

Between

Hi everyone,

 

It's a bit of an odds-and-ends post tonight.  I've been trying to think of a word for my thoughts at the moment.  I'm not sure what to go with.

 

Friday at work was another day of filling in time and generally being useless.  I was comparing notes with two of my colleagues, who are swamped with administrative tasks which they could give to me but which (owing to our oddish administrative structure) isn't allowed.  We've sent a message to our section head asking for a unit meeting to discuss these issues.  I have a sense of foreboding about it.  In the past (at other workplaces) complaints about structures and workloads tend to result in everyone identifying issues receiving punishment duties (that is, changes to work arrangements that kind of address the problem but that mainly succeed in humiliating those affected).

 

I had another good trip to the opp shop on Friday.  This time, volumes of French and English verse and a complete set of Marlowe.  Possibly the best $1.50 I've ever spent!

Because I was feeling unsettled on Friday I went for a run at Victoria Park Lake and on the Broken River trail.  The lake was its usual picture-perfect self -

 

 

The river trail took me under the railway bridge, and regular readers will know how I feel about both railways and bridges.

 

Saturday the old boy took a load of cattle down to the Peninsula - he came back tonight.  Second Oldest Sister and JP came up here for lunch which was very pleasant.  Apart from that S.O.S. mentioned that Michael had said something pretty unflattering about her.  She and JP didn't seem too fussed, but I'm pretty mad about it and don't know that I want to have much more to do with Michael.  I'd give him a bit of latitude where Little Sister is concerned - separation doesn't always bring out the best in people - and I couldn't care much less what he might say about me.  But S.O.S. (and, for that matter, Oldest Sister Economist) are a different kettle of fish.  I have a lot of reasons to be grateful to them (as readers of my old blog will know) that, I suppose, give their interests a bit of extra heft with me.

 

I was up late last night to Skype with the girls.  They were happy and well and very chatty.  After about an hour though Rachel wanted to use the ipad at their end and I was fighting to keep my eyes open.  She was so sweet about switching off though - "Good night sleep tight don't let the bedbugs bite" - that I couldn't be sad.  I'm so proud of what perfect little ladies they're becoming.  Their manners are, dare I say it, ones Grandma Judith would be proud of!

 

Today has been quiet.  It's been warm all day and if we're lucky maybe there'll be rain tonight.  We can only hope.  The dog and me have been for about 9kms worth of walks, but after the last few days I decided to give my Sunday run a miss and replace it with some strength training.  I'm feeling a bit brighter about things despite still suspecting things are work are about to take a turn for the worse.  Weird, right?  Well, I guess any change has a 50% chance of being progress, right?

 

No more for now: I'm off to have a cleanup and get to bed.  Let's see what the week brings.



Drafting Cattle and Running

Hi everyone,

 

It's been a good day here in most respects.  Indeed, in nearly all respects!

 

Because I got to bed late after Skyping last night, and had been up early from the get-go, I switched off the alarms on my phone.  I slept very soundly and until about 8:30am.

 

 

 

The morning was taken up with drafting and marking calves.  We had quite a team to do it: Dad doing the marking and tagging, Little Sister and Second Oldest Sister loading up the ear-tags and marking rings, and me, Michael and Barry S droving and drafting them in.

 

 

I lost count of how many cows went through for drenching and calves were marked and tagged.  At any rate it was a beautiful sun-drenched morning for it, and Michael was on his best behaviour.  It was good to have Barry especially: he handles cattle well and he's a very level-headed man.

 

 

We'd finished with the cattle by midday, which happened to coincide with the corned beef finishing in the pot.  Score!  It was as good a piece of silverside as I've ever had, eaten with lettuce and tomatoes.  Oddly, Michael stayed sitting outside on the verandah in a deckchair.  I don't know if he was sulking or just enjoying the sun.  It's just kind of awkward.

 

 

After lunch there was some activity on Fran's and my car - Michael volunteered to change the oil in

both(!) and I changed the tyre on mine that kept slowly going down.  Good to get that off my conscience.

 

At about 4pm I headed out on a long Sunday run, in a big loop to the east of here.  You know that I've been kind of avoiding the more awkward bits of the Little Sister - Michael situation, and on a long run bullshit can never catch up with you.  Never have I been so thankful that when the ex wanted out of our marriage, she zapped the relationship with clinical, hitwoman-esque efficiency.  Clean wounds heal fastest.

 

 

Anyway, it was a truly stunning day to be out.  The crops of canola and triticale are coming up everywhere, and the afternoon sunlight was positively golden.

 

 

 

When I got back I gave the dog a short walk and admired a pink-gold sunset.

 

 

This was about as good as the evening got: dinner was logistically awkward as Little Sister and Michael spent several hours on a heart-to-heart in the kitchen.  I don't know what the outcome was, although Michael came into the lounge room about 15 minutes ago (while I was typing this), leading to this exchange -

Michael: "Alright all, I'm off"
Mum: "Oh OK.  See you in a week or two?"
Michael: "No."
Mum: "No?"
Michael: "No."

 

And with that he left.  Sigh: I can understand a great many things, but I doubt I will ever understand people.

 

Not much more to add.  This week looks quiet at work and I may well spend some quality time looking for a second job, or a post-April 2016 job, or both.

 

Looking forward to updating you all!

 

General Rescue training day!

Hi everyone,

 

It's been a good day here.  After the last post I put up I drowsed for about an hour or so and then got up, dressed, grabbed some bread and peanut butter for breakfast and drove over to Murchison to meet with the rest of the Tatura SES members who were going to the General Rescue course at Seymour.

 

 

Regular readers will know how big a part of my life and my valuation of my life is tied up with being an SES volunteer, so you can understand how much I enjoyed the day.  I don't think I've ever met someone in orange that I haven't liked: members are often eccentric, sometimes a little nutty, and invariably individuals, but I've never met one who didn't have a good heart.

 

 

The course was as rewarding as SES courses always are, this time covering anchoring and hold-fasts. Z-rig pully systems and winching, and lifting-and-cribbing.  All skills needed to help people on need, and especially people who are trapped.  There's a few things I'll need to brush up on before hte examination day in three weeks.  I'm more eager to get started than you can imagine!

 

 

It was a pretty packed day and it felt kind of good to pile back into the Navara and begin the trip back to the Goulburn Valley proper.  We stopped at Wahring for fuel and washed the vehicle's windows as best we were able.  The team dropped me at Murchison before they went back to Tatura.

 

 

Second Oldest Sister has been up here today and will stay until tomorrow, I think possibly to have another person here in the hope that having someone else here will induce Michael to maintain his manners tomorrow (I am not optimistic).  She made dinner of small beef pies and cheesecake.

 

One thing I could have lived without was Mum seeing a news story about a high school in Virginia being most excited about the impending visit of Pope Francis ("poor children" ... "it's so stupid" ... "how many refugees are there in the Vatican?").  I wish she didn't dislike Catholicism so much.  It doesn't hurt me, exactly: I keep a low profile and avoid conflict, and Lord knows some people have a much more savage dislike of it (have a look at the comments here, for instance).  It feels more like it's an anger that she carries around that just needs a way out.  It just seems kind of sad: like someone taking pride in being able to reject love.

 

No more for now.  I have a skype date with the girls tonight and definitely looking forward to a shower and a good night's sleep after that.  Hope alls well with you and that you're heading for a happy weekend!

 

Race Weekend Recap

Hi everyone,

 

Here I am on Sunday evening, writing my weekend recap and also processing a bit.

 

It's been a full weekend.  Saturday got started with work around the house, which included learning how to unblock an epically blocked sewage pipe.  How bad was it?  Absolutely choked.  A dirty job but a dead necessary one: the toilets are much happier now.

 

This has nothing to do with anything, but I was kind of struck

that they need to do this in a rehabilitation hospital.

 

About 11:30am I got on the road for the Mornington Peninsula for today's race.  The drive itself was unremarkable: I flipped stations on the radio for most of the time I was moving, except when I entered the radio dead-zone you encounter which crossing the Great Dividing Range.  At that stage I listened to a CD I burned of a preacher discussing whether we are living in the End Times (this gentleman is persuaded we are).  My interest in this is less geopolitical than philosophical.  I was interested to compare it with the writings of the Fifth Monarchy Men and Abiezer Coppe.  What intrigues me is that in today's apocalyptic, the threat is external to the society, rather than coming from within it.

 

A propos of nothing (except the general God-bothering theme), I was interested to see this ad in the Shepparton Adviser this week.  They're recruiting!  

 

I got down to Mornington by about 3:30 and went to Mornington Park to collect my race bib.

 

 

The Park has one of the best entrances I've ever seen. 

 

I went on to Aldi to pick up some supplies for dinner.  From experience I've learned to eat light the night before a long race, and to avoid things that have a lot of fibre.  This meant that for me dinner was going to lean heavily to fish and banana.  Happily, because this was Aldi it meant that I could pay for it with loose change!

 

I had some time on my hands by the time I go to Flinders, so I went to have a look at the walkway for the old telegraph station and at the new plaque on the war memorial (it lists the district's Second World War veterans by name).  The memorial has one of the best lookouts over Westernport Bay and Kennon Cove, and last night the ocean was definitely co-operating.

 

Kennon Cove

 

Westernport Bay

 

I walked down to the Pier to get the air and stretch my legs.  The water between Flinders and Phillip Island seemed almost to merge into the sky.

 

 

I was up bright and early for the race and drove over to Mornington.  The starting line was right on Port Phillip Bay and the entire course had us running along the road along the coast.

 

 

It's a beautiful stretch of coast.  The sort of thing that makes you feel strong!  And this was a good thing: you remember when I did last week's race I just wasn't feeling my running spark?  Well, this morning I felt as strong and ready to race as I ever have.

 

 

I headed out fairly strongly and thing I was in probably the leading third of the back, with the intention of getting enough of a lead for the other runners not to catch up after they began to tire.  I felt my own pace slacken after a time and so I set a solid speed that I knew I could hold to and went with that.  It was a well set up race and the course had all of the distances (Half Marathon, 10K and 5K at once, which I thought was great.  Lots of people brought their kids, which is always a good thing - got to give them the running bug young!

 

 

Ultimately I finished in 1:52:45.  This was almost exactly one minute slower than last week, and on a more rolling course: I'm counting that as a win!

 

 

It would have been nice to explore Mornington and maybe have some fish and chips and white wine, but I needed to get on the road for Shepparton - mum was being released from hospital for a few hours to come and have lunch.

 

 

I wasn't feeling great while I was on the road, I guess in large part because of a long run, no coffee and not having taken my tablet this morning.  On the other hand, it seems that was the right frame of mind to listen to Light FM - Melbourne's radio station with a mix of Christian music and soft rock.  I'm not a huge fan of Christian music usually: it just seems kind of forced.  But, I was enjoying the Australian Christian Top 25.  I did hear one thing that I really liked - a song called 'Exhale' by a singer whose stage name is "Plumb".

 

Music appreciation aside, I stopped at the Wallan BP for fuel and (almost as badly needed) coffee and something to take a tablet with.  I felt much better afterwards!

 

 

I felt pretty good when I was north of the Ranges and seeing fields of ripening canola again.  Melbourne has no hold over me now.  If there is hope to keep what is good in the world, it lies inland.

 

 

I was back right on time for lunch - Michael was just lighting the barbeque!  Mum was looking good and pleased with the idea of being discharged from hospital soon.  Second Oldest Sister and Little Sister had come up too, and it was good to see them.  Second Oldest Sister had baked up the best apple pie I've ever had, and brought up a cake she'd baked as well.

 

Two things happened during lunch that really made me mad though.  One was that Michael decided that Little Sister's steak was barbequed too rare (although this was kind of her fault too - she's a very picky eater) and with a great air of unappreciated martyrdom went outside to grill it a bit further.  That was awkward and cast a pall of tension over lunch.  Then after we'd finished our steaks and were beginning to think about Second Oldest Sister's pie, one of the neighbours who dad hadn't met before drove up outside to explain something about a fence.  Well, Dad and Michael promptly went outside and talked to him out there for about 30 minutes, and then invited him in for coffee in the middle of what was still meant to be lunch so he could have a cup of tea with him and talk further (for another hour).  I kept myself busy as a way of hiding the fact that I was livid: it didn't seem to matter to him that it was mum's few hours out of hospital, or that Second Oldest Sister had come up from Melbourne, or that she'd clearly gone to some effort to make nice things for lunch: he had a new audience to talk to and that was all that mattered.  This tended to confirm something that I said last week: I'm single by choice.  Every person who has (or thinks they have) a significant other somehow treats them like complete dirt.  I have two words to say on the subject: Fuck. That.  I'd rather live alone and die alone than be either 50% of that equation.

 

After Second Oldest Sister went back to Melbourne and mum back to hospital, I took the dog on a good long walk to loosen my legs up. and brought up some more firewood.  Looking forward to a Skype-date with the girls tonight.

 

Hope your weekend is going great!

Of books and football

Hi everyone,

 

I'm sitting here typing this entry with Foyle's War on in the background.  It's a cool evening for the first day of Spring.  The day itself started out foggy and chilly but warmed up to pleasant and warm.  The day at work was uneven: For the morning I had, quite literally, nothing to do!  I even went and asked my boss, who had no work to give me.  I spent some time writing a few casenotes for my other blog and this took the time until lunch.

 

At lunch I walked up to the opportunity shop, which was showing the sort of sign that makes my heart sing the Hallelujah chorus -

 

As you can see, I was thrilled to respond to their ad -

 

The afternoon livened up at work, with me digging into a fascinatingly knotty issue of two Crown reserves next to each other - a road reserve and a channel reserve, administered by different entities (a local council and a government department) - which are affected by some works my employer is undertaking.  This needed me to dig into the documentary trail.  Any job that needs me to burrow into the Government Gazette from 1914 is definitely a job that needs doing!

 

 

After work I headed to the hospital and saw mum, who was in better spirits than yesterday.  I'm sure it'll be an up and down process; still, it'll be important to keep an eye on her frame of mind.

In other news, yesterday's sporting news from the Kyabram District Football League was enough to make anyone feel better about their weekend.  You might have had a rough Saturday, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't as rough as the Longwood Football Club's was ...

 

 

And if you're not familiar with Australian football scorelines, just accept that this is an epic, epic beatdown!

 

No more to add now.  I'll probably post from my phone before I turn in later.  Hope you're all doing well!

 

Weekend Recap

Hi everyone,

 

Sorry I've been absent (again) - the evenings have had me too tired to write to be honest.

 

It was a good weekend up here.  Little sister, as I may have said before, came up on Friday night.  she and I set to work giving the house a cleanup on Saturday morning, and (hurray!) I got to skype with Grace and Rachel from about 10:30am.  They're loving being back at school, and they got to see their grandfather and aunt while we were about it.

 

I don't know why the photo is mirror-imaged!

 

At around midday I went into Shepparton to the Winter Market to help out at the SES's flood awareness stand.  I'm pleased to say I think I did a good job.  That is, I was able to strike up conversations with passers-by and outline issues with flood risks to them pretty effectively.  A lot of the information we gave out will disappear down the memory hole, I'm sure, but if it only leads one person in ten to prepare for flooding (always a risk) then it's worthwhile.

 

After we wrapped up I went to Harris Scarfe to pick up a slow-cooker.  They had them on sale, and it'll be a godsend for making sure the parental units eat good healthy dinners at least.  Regular readers will know that the old boy's habit of going for very low effort (and very low nutrition) meals is a constant worry for me.  I'll feel a lot happier if I can set things up for both of them so that they simply need to flip the switch to "on" at 9am and do nothing further for the rest of the day.  If you have any slow-cooker recipes to share, fire away!

 

I went to see mum in the hospital after that: she seemed tired and bored and I know she's keen to be discharged.  As I was leaving, I ran into Dad, Little Sister and Second Oldest Sister and so we all went back to see her.  Having a crowd there certainly brightened mum up!

 

 

I was booked for the Shepparton Half-Marathon on Sunday morning and I headed off to it bright and early.  I'm surprised to say that I was feeling pretty flat as I headed in, and quite without the sort of spark that I usually get on race day.  I reminded myself not to think too much about it and to simply get on with the job at hand, which was to try and post a roughly two-hour time, which seemed optimistic given that the cold and being back at work has really made it hard to run and so I've been doing most of my training in the gym.

 

 

As it turned out, I ran a pretty good race - actually, much better than I expected to.  The course wound up and down the Goulburn River and around Victoria Park Lake, and was basically flat about 95% of the way.  Conditions were perfect: crisp and cool, warming up to a sunny morning.  I only checked my pace twice and was pleasantly surprised each time, finding I was solidly under 6 min/km.  In the end I finished in a time of 1:51:41 which was much better than I'd expected.

 

 

Directly after I'd finished I went for a session of pilates-on-demand at the gym to encourage my legs to bounce back as quickly as possible, what with having ANOTHER half marathon next weekend(!).  A shower at the gym was heavenly.

 

Because who doesn't love bling?

 

I got back to the farm about 11:30am and gave Second Oldest Sister a hand in the kitchen.  Little Sister had already gone to town to pick up mum from the hospital and they got back about 12:30pm.  Second Oldest Sister had done a pork roast for lunch which was incredibly good, and I think mum was deep-down pleased that we were all trying to help out and do the right thing.

 

By 4pm it was time for both sisters to head back to Melbourne and mum back to hospital.  I decided to rack up some more miles for the weekend and give the my legs a bit more work, so I took the dog on a good long walk across the paddocks and brought up another barrow-load of firewood.

 

The evening was a little stilted.  Because it was just dad and me conversation was awkward: I really have to watch what conversations I start because so many of them end in him going off on a rant (a case in point: on Saturday evening I passed to Second Oldest Sister a flyer the local volunteer fire brigade had put out of a fundraising market they were holding - this lead to a long diatribe from the old boy about how he was hostile to the Country Fire Authority because there hasn't been a fire on the home place since the 1840s but he still has to pay a fairly expensive Fire Services Levy).  I love the old boy dearly, but it's getting harder to respect him as his personality becomes more dominated by his resentments.

 

I woke up a bit sore this morning, but that's fading as the day has worn on.  A good protein-heavy dinner should encourage suitable muscle repair.  The day at work has been quiet, and I've taken advantage of the lull to start scoping out other jobs.  I can't bear the thought of being out of work again and Lord knows I'd like to find some work that's a bit more satisfying.  Frankly, rescue work would be ideal for me.  Just have to keep looking!

 

I'll post this and head to hospital and see mum.  May post more later.