My Blog-Fu is weak

Haven't fired out a post for a while, so I thought I'd throw some words together. After the flurry of activity that was Feb/March, things have slowed down to a more managable pace. Work has been pretty slow, and I'm still waiting to hear back about the job I went for back in March (which also happens to be the job I'm in at the moment) and the wait is certainly dragging on a bit. It has cast a bit of a pall over work generally, even though things are fairly interesting at the moment. But the less said about work the better.

On the house front, I haven't managed to get up to the site and take some good photo's since I last blogged, for a combination of reasons. These include builders working on the site (precluding a good ole fashioned fence jumping) and terrible weather when I've had time to visit. The end of daylight savings for the year has also made getting up to the site after work to take pictures difficult, as half the time it's already dark by then.

I miss daylight savings (and summer) already! Having made that slightly maudlin statement, the weather at the moment is pretty choice. Autumn and spring really are the best times of year in Canberra - usually lots of sun, but with a crispness to the air which I really enjoy.

Speaking of the nice weather, I've been trying to take advantage of it as much as possible recently, with several bike rides and some bush walking. I even managed to get Dana to ride her swanky bike all the way up to Gungahlin (around 11km from where we live at the moment) for breakfast the other day, which was a major achievement. I've also helped form a mixed netball team, which has been interesting and very confusing. We're called "Fonzy and the Shark Jumpers" which I've had to explain to many many people. Troglodytes.

To save me the trouble of explaining it again (and you, the reader, the embarrasment of asking) Wikipedia has all the answers and a you tube video of the original is below.

Waterskiing in a leather jacket?!? Will that crazy Fonzy ever learn?

And again!

I think maybe one of the reasons I've been caining the excercise recently (as well as the video games) is that I haven't really been enjoying alcohol that much of late. This may shock those that know me. It's also too expensive, and I'm saving pennies like nothing else to cover the stamp duty on the home, which is due in July, 12 months after we signed the contract. The stamp duty caught be a little off guard as well - I've had the deposit saved for ages, and in my mind the stamp duty was covered by the first home owners grant (and boost). Unfortunately, the timing of things means that this isn't really the case, because the stamp duty needs to be paid up front, before the completion of the house, and the grant/boost are paid as a rebate, straight to the bank, after settlement. This is not really a problem in terms of our ability to pay them, but it is frustrating. I had thought I had the majority of the scraping and saving sorted for the moment.

As a side note, I think the ACT is just about the only place in Australia where I would have to pay stamp duty; all the other states more generous exemptions for first time home buyers. However, the ACT have more limited sources of revenues than other states, so they're less generous with their exemptions.

But the Canberra property situation is for another post.

Anyway, what was supposed to be a quick post has now eaten through half of my lunch break, and I'm starving. I'm off to get some food and buy a dressing gown (the mornings are getting a chill to them). Hopefully should have posts on the house, bush walking, and netball soon, or at least when I can be bothered getting round to resizing pictures.