Managed to get on site last night - things are getting really close to completion, or at least it feels like it. since we were last on site, they've got all the internal driveways in, the garage roller door is on (and seems to be on most places), the clothes line is up, and all of the power and phone points are in! They've even put the controller for the central heating in, which is quite exciting. The inside of the place has been cleaned up and the mirrors installed in the bathrooms as well, things are getting closer.

In fact, it's probably easier just to look at what hasn't been done yet - I can pretty much count them on one hand! The most obvious is probably the carpets, although I'd expect them to be last. Then there's the appliances (oven and dishwasher), the fencing and the landscaping in communal areas. The final elements missing at the holes in the roof under the skylights in the en suite and laundry. 

Quite exciting! Still no word on when we can move in, which is a bit of a piss off, but it's still great to see progress.

I didn't manage to get any more photo's, and in fact, we were pretty lucky to get in the house at all, as most of the lockable doors were locked. I do, however, have a picture of the buffet unit we bought with the couch, and the curtain fabric samples against the carpet sample.

Unfortunately it's not that great a picture - I actually got kicked out of the store for taking it. Apparently they're worried about people getting knock offs made from the picture or something, which I think it a little silly. Plus, it's not really a nice way to treat someone who's recently spent almost $8k at your store! Rude buggers. Anyway, it's all solid timber, and the doors in the front slide to the sides in front of the drawers. It's actually going to be the TV unit, so we're going to have to get a drill and make some holes in the back for the cabling. It's bigger than it looks in the picture as well. Anyway, I'll get a better shot when we actually get it delivered. 

In the meantime, here's a the carpet sample with the curtain samples from Duckcloth against it.

As you can see, my favourite one looks the best, and I think we're going to go with it. 

Anyway, I'd better get to bed. Until next time friends!

With Lasers, wormhole generators, and sonic thrusters

I've read a couple of places on the intertubes recently that at the 2012 Olympics in London, the Modern Pentathlon will be switching to laser pistols for the shooting events. 

It makes me happy that all my teenage years spent plying Virtua Cop 2 in the Arcade was not wasted....

I'm sure that somewhere along the way, someone, somewhere is going to up upset that a laser pistol might require less skill, no compensating for the wind or whatever.

To those people, I say: welcome to the future. Robots will be along shortly with mind bending future drinks to take your mind off it.

We've seen a drop in all three measures of workforce engagement

Hello! Fancy seeing you here - it's been a while, and I bet you thought I'd forgotten all about you.

This is simply not the case - I've just been swamped at work and have been going through a massive reading phase recently. I've been averaging around 3 books a week since about mid-August. I blame this on the staycation and also Dana ordering a lot of books off the internets. I'm starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of books at home though, will need seek out other pursuits. Or buy more books...

The work side of it is a little bit interesting. By rights, working in a policy area that both sides of Parliament are swearing blue that they won't be active in, it should be really quiet and cruisey in the caretaker period. But unfortunately, this has not been the case, due to a couple of things. The first is that the time frames for the issue that I'm working on are really tight, and there's not that much room to stop and do nothing. In addition, the time frame is being set by Fair Work Australia, the federal industrial tribunal, which doesn't take that much notice of elections.

The second is that we had a re-structure, and my direct supervisor took a voluntary redundancy. As she wasn't replaced, I've had to take a few extra duties.

None of this is really that exciting to you, I'm sure. Suffice to say, I had a whole heap of work to do and now, I'm in post election limbo, with much less to do. It's actually pretty demoralising not knowing who I'm going to be working for, and not being able to get working on it. Don't get me wrong, we've done a lot of prep for either way, but there's not much more that I can do without actually having a Government.

The funny thing is, everyone else where I work reached this point weeks ago. A friend summarised it with a lol public servants:

Hopefully it will all be over soon, but to be honest, for the sake of the next three years, I think I'd rather just have them go back to the polls and someone get a full majority. You think this whole independents horse holding the power thing is bad now, wait until there's some essential bill that Parliament can't pass because Bob Katter's a nut bar in a cowboy hat. It'll be double dissolution before you can say "how's ya father" and we'll be right back where we are now.

Another six weeks of annoyance vs. three years (and probably less) of stagnation in the Parliament? Shit choices either way really. Although I guess if you go in for politics generally and it means the other side (which ever that is to you) doesn't get their way for another three years, there might be some consolation there.

Bleugh.

In other news, I'm going to Foreshore in November with Dana and kindred spirits Karla and Esa. It costs a mint, but I'm looking forward to a few bevvies in the sun in a nice location and some tuuuuunes. I'm also looking forward to laughing at Tiesto.

"OHAI2U RAVERS, I ARE NUMBER 1 DJ LOL!!!1!1"

To balance out the Tiesto, here's some Noisia and Phace. I've been listening to Phace and Misanthrop's 'From Deep Space' this afternoon, and it's keeping me positive.

The sample 20 seconds in to this till about a minute always makes me smile. Also making me smile in that particular clip are all the ravers caught making made nightclub faces. Somebody make some noise (or some such) for the DJ!

To round it all out, here's an absolutely awesome clip that was on Giz a little while back of some stop motion animation. I also dig the soundtrack. Hey Daver, this one's for you (no play dough though).

I love lamp

I've been pretty busy recently with both work and play recently, which has led me to neglect this blog. Thankfully I've got some time off at the moment, which gives me a chance to get a post out! There's been plenty of house related goings on (although we haven't actually visited the house in a while). The most exciting of which is that we have some more detail on the licence agreement and an estimated move in date! I'm choosing to ignore the fact that all dates provided by the builder so far have been hopelessly inaccurate, and have instead opted to hope this one will be better.

Anyway, the most recent time frame puts us actually moving in (!!) in 4-6 weeks. There are two things that give me a bit of hope that this will be adhered to - first that the properties are starting to look more finished and I can actually see it happening. The second is that we're starting to get some detail about the licence agreement! The most salient information we have so far is an estimated fee in place of rent - $350 / week. It's a good $125/week less than the rent where we are at the moment, so it's pretty good odds that we'll take the licence agreement when it is finally properly offered. 

The only fly in the ointment at the moment is that the timing is less than ideal for me at work - I'll be very busy around that point in time! I had hoped to take a week or two off to move in and get the place sorted out properly, but that's probably not going to happen now. It's a minor annoyance though - I'll just be so damn happy to get the keys to the place!

More news on that as it arises.

We've also managed to get our hands on a carpet sample for the new place, which is actually a bit darker than I remembered. The swatches of curtain fabric that Dana ordered from duckcloth.com.au arrived as well, and the lighter one goes quite well with the carpet. I love it when a plan comes together.


We've also had a good friend pick up the lamp we ordered a while back, which is now assembled and in our living room - I'm sitting under it right now! Here's a picture of Dana sitting under it:

Wheeeee! 


Until next time ladies and gents, keep your laces loose.

A successful day

A quick note to say that we had a successful day shopping yesterday - we bought the couch and a buffet (which we're going to re-purpose as a TV unit). Contrary to the advice we'd had previously, the store said it will be ready in three weeks, but they're going to store it for us until we're ready to move in. Exciting! I was going to take a picture of the buffet, but I completely forgot when we were at the shop - I'll try and remember to take one again some time.

In addition, we checked out a few curtain places, and had some productive discussions around curtains. We found a couple of places that would be happy to make curtains with the fabric Dana found on duckcloth.com.au (blogged about previously), which was promising. We actually found a few swatches of cloth in the shops that were quite good as well, and would probably be a fair bit cheaper.

Dana's been looking for alternatives to side tables, because we won't really be able to fit any in around the couch. She's come up with the idea to use small stools that can be moved around, or used for additional seating as needed instead. A leading choice at the moment is the replica Xavier Pauchard Tolix stool pictured in several colours below.

These have the advantage of being stackable and well sealed against the weather, so they could be used outside without too much worry. However, they are quite expensive.

I'm feeling really upbeat about the whole thing at the moment, good times. Now time to finish watching season one of Mad Men and argue with Dana about what sort of home theater setup to go with - she prefers the more streamlined home theater in a box type setups, where as I prefer a more chunky (and slightly higher end) dedicated receiver and speakers. I have a suspicion that her point of view will probably win out in the end - it usually seems to. 

 

Edit: I should clarify the reference to the home theater setup above - Dana would prefer that they were invisible, or in fact, were not purchased at all, where as I would prefer some sort of ridiculously expensive and ugly home theater room instead. The discussion at the moment is about where we compromise between them all, based on budget at the available options. And also that we don't have a home theater room.

Shark vs. Elephants

Last night, Fonzie and the Shark Jumpers free-shot their way to victory past the cocky White Elephants, their second victory against the pale pachyderms this season. The teams were evenly matched, and despite an early lead, it looked like the Jumper's poor stamina might loose them the game in the final quarter.

Thankfully, a series of obstruction and contact calls on the Elephants kept the Jumpers in the game.

It all game to a head in the final minutes of the game, where the Elephants took the lead for the first time after trailing by a small number of points all game. The Jumpers equalized, but it looked like it was too late for a victory....

...until their goal keeper decided to muscle in on Jumper goal attack, Matthew Patterson, just as the buzzer was called! This resulted in a free shot in extra time, which Matthew converted to the winning goal!

Fonzie and the Shark Jumpers have jumped another shark.

Curtains and "moving in under licence"

We had an email from our real estate agent yesterday about completion dates, and options for moving in. The builder has said that they should have the certificate of occupancy by the end of August, which means the units will be habitable, and finished for all intents and purposes. The date of settlement (which, as I understand it, is when both parties get what they are promised in the contract - ownership of the unit for us, money for the builder) will then depend on the registration of the units plan with the ACT Govt.

This is where things fall down a bit - the ACT Govt could take anywhere between three weeks and three months to register the units plan. It probably should take a lot less, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a rule somewhere that it must take less, but this is not something that the ACT Govt seems particularly worried about. After the units plan is fully registered, there is a 14 day settlement period. So the best case scenario adds five weeks (three weeks units plan registration, 2 weeks settlement) to the time that the unit is ready for occupation physically, and when we could take full ownership of it.

Which is a bit shit to be honest.

The builder/developer have suggested an alternative option, which is that the owners to be "move in under licence". My understanding of this is that we enter into a sort of special landlord/tenant relationship with the developer, with a fee payable at settlement in lieu of rent. We don't know how much this will be yet, or any of the other details of the potential agreement. This will come from developers lawyer to our lawyer at some stage in the future.

Much as it frustrates me to give more money to the developer despite the whole thing being at least 7 months overdue, I'm actually rather keen to take this option. You have no idea how ridiculously keen I am to get into our new house and start sorting it out properly. Of course, for that to work, there would have to be scope in the agreement between the developer and ourselves for use to do things to the house. For example, we would need to be able to have TV aerials, phone lines, curtains etc installed. Otherwise it wouldn't really be worth it.

Speaking of curtains, Dana has been making moves on that front. She's recently requested swatches from online fabric company duckcloth, which should hopefully arrive in the next couple of days. They're variations on the same theme, and they are Henry Approved, pending a gander at the swatches.

This is my favourite of the two. The other, seen below, has a different background colour that just doesn't appeal as much. Having said that, I'd probably be happy with either, and it's hard to imagine what the curtains would actually look like from a picture on the internets.

The plan at this stage is to try and buy the fabric online and then have someone else make it into curtains for us, and install the necessary curtain rods (or whatever they're called). This is not something I can do myself - I am no handy man. We're going to get on to that this weekend, in addition to couch purchasing!

Very exciting times all round, I can't wait until the end of next month!

I'm going to head home and prepare for tonight's netball game. We're without our star centre due to injury, so I hope we can still hold our own without her. If I recall correctly, we beat the team we're facing tonight last time around. However, we also managed to almost poke one of their eyes out in the process. It was an accident, but I wouldn't have been too happy if I were them.