When Life Gives You Lemons...

...bend life over and stick those lemons where the sun don't shine.

[Rant Mode ON]
Yesterday, I had some rather insulting news. We had our end-of-year Faculty forum. At this function they tell us what a wonderful Faculty we've been, how awesomely we've served our students and in general they pat us all on the back. This event is also when they announce the winners of the Performance Awards. These awards are given to those staff who have shown excellent performance over the past year. This year, the head of our discipline nominated myself and my assistant for these awards. He's been most pleased with our performance this year and thought we deserved recognition. I felt pretty good when he told us this as its been a tough year and we've still managed to pull through. That was about 3 months ago.

No one finds out if they've won an award until they announce it at the end-of-year forum. Today, they flashed up the names of the winners. I wasn't amongst them. O.K., I can deal with that. My assistant's name was up there. Wait, what? We've been working together on the same projects. I've been doing longer hours and working at least as hard as, if not harder than my assistant has and she gets the award while I miss out!?! I've rearranged my home life to commit to work more, spending less time with my family and getting more stressed than I have been for the last 15 years and apparently I'M the one who is not performing while she IS!?! What the hell is up with that!?! Frankly, I find it highly insulting. I'm pretty angry about the whole thing and if I didn't need the money to support my family, I'd storm into the office on Monday and tell our Dean that he can stick my job where his sun don't shine. How can you possibly award one person for their performance at a set of tasks when their workmate who is not only working along side them but is also supervising them and taking the responsibility for those self-same tasks is not also awarded?

Here, life. Take these here lemons and stick them where your sun doth not shine. I've had it with this cr@p.
[Rant Mode OFF]

Cruisin' around.

Well, I picked up my bike last week. Sweet. Getting the thing out of the dealership was a bit of a nightmare as they farked around with paperwork, checking that we'd payed the money and finding the boots I'd ordered. After about an hour of stuffing around I finally rode out of there on my new bike (so new in fact that it had zero on the odometer).

What a change to the scooter. The power. THE POWER!!! MWAHAHAHAHA!!! Its just so nice to have the grunt to accelerate up a hill! I didn't get go on quite the long ride I wanted to (as the weather turned nasty and riding in the wet on new tyres is just asking for trouble) but I still got to give her a decent run.

I love everything about my new bike aside from two minor things. 1: Neutral is hard to find. For those of you who don't know, neutral on a motorbike sits between the 1st and 2nd gears. You do a half-shift with the gear lever while in 1st and the bike clicks into neutral. This is essential to find as when you start the bike from cold it needs to idle for a while and you don't want to sit on the thing holding the clutch in. I think it might be because the gearbox is new and still a little clunky. 2: The windshield sh!ts me. In the rain and cold, it keeps the wet and/or cold wind off your chest. Nice. When you go over 70kph the turbulence it generates around your helmet is so loud that you can no longer hear the bike's engine. Crap. You need to hear the engine so you know when to change gears. I can keep myself warm and dry with the right clothing but the noise thing is a problem. So the windshield's got to go. Its only four bolts to remove it so that's not too much trouble. As I said, they're pretty minor things.

What I'm really looking forward to is a nice ride up into the mountains or up the highway. I'm going to a gaming tourney up in Caboolture soon and plan on riding the bike up there. Should be nice to ride up the highway on the bike. Its just such a sense of freedom on the bike. I can see why its so addictive for so many people. I think I may become one of them.

Vroooommmm!

Man. I'm exhausted. Today, Tash and I cleaned up the backyard in preparation for Alex's birthday party next week. We had a lot of assistance from my Mum, Dad, brother and Medway. But the backyard is clear of rubbish and fully fenced in. I'm so glad to have a backyard that Alex can't escape from now. I've been so worried he'd run out onto the main road and now we can be in the backyard with him and not have to worry about him running off.

Also, I'm now the proud owner of a new bike. A nice 650cc Hyosung Aquila cruiser. I went into the dealership for a test ride yesterday and really enjoyed the ride. Very, very nice bike and the price just can't be beaten. The next best bike would be a Honda Shadow and while its the same price (and is also a very, very nice ride), it's only a 400cc and has none of the extra features that the Hyosung has. Tash came along and had a look and we negotiated a deal for this:


This my very bike. Even the colour. With all the bells and whistles. Sweet. I pick it up on Wednesday and I have to say that I just can't wait. I'm taking the day off work and I'm going on a nice, long ride on it. I think I'll head either up or down the coast with it to give it a good run. Heh, heh. Vrooooommm!

Of Bikes and Marriage...

Wow. This morning I was pretty drowsy. The course yesterday really took it out of me and I was wasted. 8 hours of sleep later and I still felt pretty cr@p. I'm cleaning up the kitchen when Tash wanders over to me and says: "Happy 13th Anniversary, hon!" Wait, what? Its not the 21st is it!?! Well sh!te, it is! I'd nearly forgotten our anniversary! We've been married for 13 years and I nearly let the day go by without a thought. I never thought that would happen to me. Ever. Thankfully, my wife is a wonderful, forgiving person and she was not upset. We're going to go out for dinner tonight with the boy in tow and have ourselves a family night. Should be very nice.

As to the bike-thing, I passed my Q-Ride course! YAY! I was really very nervous about it but I think I did really well. I was most nervous about the road-ride but once I was out there, it felt so natural. My gear changing and braking all came to me smoothly and I enjoyed the ride. Wow. I went into QLD Transport today and am now an officially licensed motorcycle rider. Look out world! Here I come! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

My Boy's Growing Up.

Two posts in a single day? Are you kidding me? Wow. He’s either got lots of news to share, is feeling talkative or is bored at work. Well, it’s mostly the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got stuff to do but I’m just not interested in doing it. Plus I’m on my break.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that Alex is in speech therapy to treat his childhood apraxia of speech (or “CAS”). He’s been coming along brilliantly and is up to spontaneous 4 to 6 word sentences. This is awesome. For a child diagnosed with severe CAS, to be spontaneously generating sentences of this length after only 7 months of treatment is truly amazing. But that’s not the best part. What is even better is that he is also spontaneously copying new words and repeating them without prompting. This means he is starting to overcome the apraxia barriers in his mind and body. And yesterday evening he showed me just how far he’s come.

We’ve had a big corner of our backyard cleared out of the weeds and crap. This left a big, bare patch of soil which we seeded with some grass. This has come up but the recent (and sudden) increase in temperature coupled with a lack of rain has turned it brown and its starting to die. Water restrictions have been eased lately so I thought we’d water it to try and get it going again. I was watering it when Alex came over and told me “My turn, Dad”. I gave him the hose and he ran off to spray the water into his sandpit. I told him to come back and water the grass.

“No. My turn, Dad!”

“But the grass needs water, Alex.”

“No.”

“But look, it’s all brown and sad. Its needs the water to be happy again.”

“Oh, no. My turn for happy!”

With that, he ran over to the grass and began to water it by running up and down, spraying water and saying “Happy! Happy!” over and over. He’s never said the word “happy” before. It involves several sounds he’s had trouble with (“H”, “Pee”) but he just took straight to it. It was wonderful and made the months of hard work worth every minute and cent we’ve spent. Occasionally he’d stop to survey his handiwork and see a brown patch he’d not seen previously. He’d say “Oh, no. Sad, Dad!” I’d ask him, “So what will you do?”, “I go happy!” would be his reply (we’re working on “make”). He’d smile at me and run off with the hose and water the patch of “sad” grass. It felt good to have him communicate with me. I can’t wait to hold long conversations with my boy.

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks.

I’ve been riding my scooter for about 10 years now. It’s saved us an absolute pile of money in commuting (MUCH cheaper than public transport) as well as time (as I’m not beholden to a bus or train timetable) but the poor thing is on her last legs. She’s done more than 26,000km with some serious hills to challenge her little 50cc motor and now it’s starting to tell. She’s developed a rasping noise that I think is telling me that the bearings in one of her wheels is about to go and that’s a pretty major repair. Her tires are wearing out (these are the original ones she came with) and her headlight has blown AGAIN. All this adds up to a scooter that is more expensive to repair than she’s worth to sell or trade. So it’s time to upgrade.

Tash and I said that when we got rid of the scooter we’d get me upgraded to a full motorbike licence, gears and all. So when the noise started in the scooter, I went and got my motorbike learner’s permit. Here in QLD, if you have an open car licence, you can apply for your motorbike learner’s, do a course called “Q-Ride” and if you pass the course, you get your motorbike provisional licence (which, like a car licence, you stay on for a year). There’s no waiting time. You can go in and get your bike L’s and that afternoon do your Q-Ride course and pick up your P’s the next day. One issue for me though: I’d never ridden a bike with a manual clutch before. Scooters have gears, but it’s all automatic. I don’t want to get an automatic bike licence, that’s just lame. It’s the full licence or nothing for me. So I had to get some training in riding a manual bike.

A few phone calls and I found Morgan and Wacker’s training centre. They do Q-Ride courses but also have a Gear and Clutch course to get you used to a manual bike. Nice. Best bit is it’s only about 8mins down the road from home. Sweet. I booked in and did the course yesterday. I wasn’t too nervous until I got on the bike. It was a big, 650cc BMW. Nice bike. I chose the 650cc as Tash and I are looking at getting me a 650cc cruiser bike. Once I got on, I realized I needed to learn a LOT more than I thought I had to. My feet have had nothing to do on a bike before but now they have to brake (right foot) and change gears (left foot). Plus I now have to remember that my left hand is the clutch instead of the rear brake. Thankfully my right hand is still the front brake. The clutch was trickier than I thought it would be. I’m not ashamed to say I stalled the bike a few times before I got the feel of it but I’ve realised I need to work hard on building up the strength of my hands. The clutch is heavier than I ever expected and you use it A LOT. The biggest lesson I learned: RIDE THE CLUTCH! At low speeds, you control the speed of your bike not with the throttle, but with the clutch. THAT takes a bit of getting used to. After 90mins of riding, doing slaloms, slow riding (as in less than 10km/hr) and tight figure-8’s I got a much better handle on the clutch. I hope I’m ready for my Q-Ride on Sunday. I think I am.

But I’m still nervous. I might be ready to ride around the training circuit again, but I’m not sure if I’m ready for traffic yet. Still we’ll see. I’ve just got to remember I have a clutch and a foot brake. Then once I’ve gotten my licence, it’s off to shop for a new bike! This is what I’m hoping to get:

Quite an upgrade from my little scooter. Sweet.

Parental Anecdotes 2.0

And yet another blog post proving that I have had my head buried in work and family for such a long time that it’s now September, meaning 6 months have flown by since my last Blog post. Geez. Lots has happened. Work got busy. Alex grew some more and started speech therapy (he has been diagnosed as having Apraxia of speech) and is coming along in leaps and bounds. Tash started a new job. I got all technological and acquired smartphones for Tash and I. Busy, busy, busy life.

But what I wanted to share in this blog post was another joyful moment of parenthood I experienced last night. Alex and Tash went to bed early as they were both exhausted giving me a couple of hours of Peace and Quiet (TM). I watched a movie and then played a game on the ‘puter. Just before I shut the ‘puter off I decided to browse through the folder marked “Alexander”. While trolling through the hundreds of photos of my son I found a folder marked “Playing with the New Camcorder”. I open it to find some AVI files of Alex. In one of them he is “helping” his mother water the garden. What he is actually doing is spraying everything in sight with the hose. At one point he finds the outlet for the downpipe off the shed roof and begins spraying water up the pipe. After a couple of seconds, the water begins to run out again, at which Alex squeals with delight. So he sprays the water again and, after another delay, more water comes out. He’s fascinated. He does this a few more times before the video ends. It was really nice to watch.

I love watching my little boy discover the world. He just finds so much happiness in the simple things and I love sharing it with him, even after the fact.

AMUSING SIDE STORY: Two nights ago I was getting ready for bed when I heard Alex grumbling in his sleep. He’s had some nightmares recently so I thought I’d check on him. As I entered the room he sat up, still sound asleep, and belched rather loudly. After the belching was done, he giggled and proceeded to lie back down as if nothing had happened. All still sound asleep. I had to creep out so I didn’t wake him with my laughter. It still makes me laugh. Heh. THAT’S my boy!

So 20% of 2011 is gone?

Wow. Three months gone. And what a three months it has been. Alex turned two. My wife and I each officially got another year older. We once again celebrated the Christian hijacking of a pagan holiday as well as the turning of the year. I watched as my hometown (Brisbane) flooded to levels last seen when I was just one year old. I’ve been to Melbourne and Canberra (in that order). Alex started at Childcare. Wow. A very busy time. So much has happened it’s hard to know what the most significant event is. I’m thinking its likely best to just leave it there and pick up anew when I get a bit more time to write more.

I’ll write more about the Tigershark conversion I mentioned a while ago along with completed pics as they turned out better than I had feared. Plus they have lights and sounds! Wheee!

But for now, let’s just agree that it’s been a helluva time since I last posted, shall we?