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I’m sure everyone who reads this knows that Lisa is 20 weeks pregnant. She had the 20 week scan today, and we learnt the gender of the child. Might tell you in a day or two…

I was wrong! England actually won a game of cricket this summer. Amazing…

Now that the power is back on (for how long, who knows?) I can give you an update on Lisa’s car. It was very definitely a drive belt that let go. It was towed to the local workshop, as I mentioned, and they’ll have it ready for us in a few days.

I was very lucky with the power; I was already on my way home when it went. I had a 2:30pm meeting with Telstra today, and that was over at just after 3:30pm, so by the time the power problems occurred I was almost at Melton.

Lisa’s car failed her on the road today. Just the Maryborough side of Clunes the battery light came on, the aircon stopped and steam started coming out from under the bonnet. Put all three together and you’ve got some kind of drive belt failure. The RACV are on their way (not there just yet) and will almost certainly have to tow the car to the workshop.

I called the local workshop we always go to, and Nola answered. “Hi Andrew”. I said Lisa had car trouble and the RACV are towing the car there. She asked which car; I said the Mazda, and she didn’t need to know any more. They’ll fix it quickly and properly; they always do great work.

It’s good having a friendly first-name basis relationship with people in a country town. The people who fix your car are the same people you meet at the supermarket for a bit of a natter. Everyday life is so much more laid back, friendly and intimate than in the big smoke. It’s the way life should be; small communities, friendly faces and everyone willing to do what’s needed to help each other out.

Update @ 12:45 – Lisa’s Dad has arrived, and they’re pulling chunks of a failed belt out of the engine bay.

I borrowed Lisa’s mountain bike when I came down to Melbourne yesterday; as planned, I took it out this morning for a ride with a few other people from Siemens. It was a tough ride for someone as overweight and unfit as I am. What made it even worse is that I’m totally not used to the way a mountain bike handles; very, very different to my road bike. The mountain bike is constantly moving about underneath you, whereas the road bike sits absolutely still. It took a while to get used to that. It also took a while to get the seat height right; the hills were initially very difficult, but once the seat height was better they weren’t too bad.

I’ll be back next Tuesday morning for another ride, but I hope it isn’t as hard as today’s was. 2300 kCal for an early morning ride is a little bit too much — especially when you only cover a bit over 10km.

I said the other day I’d have a few words to say about the cricket on Friday night. It was the opening match of the ODI series between us, England and New Zealand.

Well, here’s those few words:

• Winners: Australia. Of course.
• Crowd behaviour: Pretty bad. The Barmy Army have class; the Australian crowd Friday night was just a bunch of drunken yobs.
• One handed catch by person in crowd with mobile phone: Excellent; better than at least one of the fielding teams. I’ve heard that whoever it was has since been on TV and radio… there’s your 15 minutes of fame.
• Andrew Symonds: Dead set legend. Brilliant in the field.
• MGC food: As disgracefully organised and priced as usual. Didn’t spend a single cent at the ground. Never planned to, but browsed anyway.

I have a suspicion that this England team will leave here at the end of summer without a single win. Someone at work suggested that if we arrange for them to play the Bayswater under-16 blind team maybe then the poms will have a chance.

One that was interesting was when Pietersen got hit in the ribs charging McGrath – not one single Australian went to help. When Strauss got hit in the test match everyone was worried. Big contrast.

We had a very busy weekend. Lots and lots of moving things around, so the house was a complete mess for most of it. Because we don’t use the office in the garage for much any more it’s being powered down. The office space out there has essentially turned into storage space. Lots of stuff from the house was moved out there (including Lisa’s treadmill; setup nicely for her to use out there) as well as a fair few things moving around inside the house.

The spare bedroom now has a desk in it with the computer on it, so it’s once again away from the main living area. At the moment it’s one of the big, black and ugly but very sturdy IDEA desks. Over time we’ll look for something more elegant and more compatible with it being a spare room rather than making it a home office with a bed in it.

The main living area of the house feels bigger since everything moved around, but this probably just means Adelaide will make an even bigger mess. Great.

Lisa, Adelaide and I went around some local cemeteries today and visited some of Lisa’s family graves. Photoset up on flickr.

I’ve been very busy the last day or two, so pretty quiet posting to the blog. Busy day planned for today too: visit a few grave sites and bake some choc chip cookies for Jacob to thank him for looking after Adelaide last Wednesday.

More later, including a few words about the cricket last night. I was there.

A documentary about the effect of drugs and alcohol on spider webs.

Not safe for work. Definitely. Pretty funny though.