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The Kid went to a Halloween Party today. She wasn’t feeling the best, but she’s been looking forward to this party for a few weeks now, so she went along and did her best to enjoy herself.

Lisa went to the salvo’s last week and got a few bits and pieces to make a fabulous scarecrow costume. Aunty Diane came over before the party and did a great job painting her face. She really looked the part.

I didn’t go the party (stayed home with The Baby) but Lisa and The Kid had a wonderful time. Cathy and Shaun (the host parents) did a wonderful job for all the kids; lots of activities and Halloween things to do.

There’s a gallery up on SmugMug.

I took this shot at the Post Office yesterday. It’s the soldier on the ANZAC memorial.

The sky was obviously not even close to this color; I went a little crazy with the hue and saturation sliders in LightRoom and I love the result.

The purple really suits the theme. 

Is it really 11 days since my last blog entry? I guess so. It’s been a busy few weeks. Work has been flat out on a final push to get my current project done, and I’ve been quite busy. I’ve spent a lot of time working from home where I’ve been able to get a heap of things done, and I spent a day in the CBD (went in on the train) to assist the customer with some final testing work.

Today was quite a special event in Maryborough. The Catholic Church have an initiative called the World Youth Day Cross. It was started by Pope John Paul II in 1983 and given to the youth of the world as a focal point for the church’s work. More info here.

The World Youth Day has been held in a wide variety of different places, and at the moment it’s Australia’s turn. The actual day is in Sydney in July next year, but as part of the build up the cross and a sacred icon are passing through all of the Catholic diocese in Australia. At the moment it’s in the Ballarat diocese, and today was Maryborough’s turn.

The cross arrived in the town square at 4pm, and after it was assembled and erected there were a few short speeches and prayers before a walk from there to the church. At the church there was an ecumenical service after which everyone was invited to spend a few contemplative moments with the cross as they saw fit. I took The Kid up and we read the Pope’s inscription on the plaque.

Although we’re not members of the Catholic church we participate in events like this for a few reasons. First, it helps support The Kid’s education. It would be slightly confusing for her to have religious education as part of her school day and for us to dismiss it as stupid. Second, it’s far from stupid. Although I personally struggle to believe many of the church’s literal teachings I totally understanding much of the underlying message: the sense of community and the drive for us all to become better people by caring more for others who are sometimes less fortunate than us.

I’ve put a photo gallery up on SmugMug.

Last Sunday we went to Jacob’s 6th birthday party at the Gold Rush minigolf center in Ballarat. All the kids had a great time. We played the indoor course, which meant I used the flash way more than I like to. Photos up on SmugMug.

I’ve just noticed a big jump in the amount of space I’ve got in my Gmail account. It’s been hovering around the 2700MB mark for many months now, and it’s just suddenly gone to 3297MB. It was only a week ago that I was just nudging 30% utilization and now it’s dropped to the low 20′s. Has anyone else seen this space increase?

My friend Jeremy has had one of his photos used as a magazine cover. Good stuff.

I mowed the chook pen today, and took a couple of wheelbarrows of grass clippings over to the other side of the yard, behind the dog pen. I planned to rake them out so they’ll dry off and blow away, but didn’t get around to it before we went shopping. When we got back one of the horses from next door had jumped the fence (and I mean that quite literally; we saw the hoof marks where he landed) and started helping himself to some nice fresh grass clippings.

The folks from next door came over to help round him up and get him back over the fence. When it was all over I helped tidy up the fence, because it was looking pretty daggy.

In the town of Agedabia, Libya, my grandfather wrote

Nellie and Robin stand out as a great hope for me and am willing to sacrifice all for them.

It’s hard for someone who has grown up in Australia, so far removed from the war, to understand just how difficult and troubling those times were. It’s easy, however, to feel very privileged and humble to have had men like this stand up and defend their country so that we get to enjoy life as we do today.

I don’t remember that much of my grandfather. We moved away from England when I was 6, and I only saw him a few times after that. I feel like I hardly knew him, but I miss him a lot.

We took The Kid and her cousin Sam to the Tangled Maze in Creswick over the weekend. We went through both mazes and played a round of mini golf on their golf course.

The big maze was excellent. It would have taken us nearly an hour to work our way through to the exit. The kids were each given a card with a series of things they had to find as they went through; completing every question got them a reward at the end. There were 7 questions, and you had to remember them all. The hardest was finding the six different grass rakes that each had a letter on them; you then had to assemble the letters into a word.

The maze was made up of a whole lot of different plants. Some were traditional hedging plants, while others were creepers and shrubs that had been trained onto trellises and fences. As everywhere could see the impact of the drought; I’m sure that in a wetter time when the vegetation was more lush and flowering it would be a fantastic sight.

The smaller maze was only knee high, and was obviously much easier to race through. That was their ‘daisy maze’, and I’m sure when the daisies are in full bloom it looks lovely. It was a cold and windy day when we visited though, so most of the flowers were sleeping.

The mini golf was fun too. Some holes were really easy, and some were difficult. Sam managed to bag two hole-in-one shots, which was a great effort. The Kid struggled a little bit with her golf action, but got there in the end.

I’ve put some shots up on SmugMug, and left a few more comments on each shot.

I found out why our ‘net connection was slow. We had been throttled by the ISP, as I kind of suspected. I didn’t have access to their online web usage stats, but a quick call to their support desk fixed that (I couldn’t remember the password!) and I saw that we had just nudged over the monthly 15GB limit. Ticked over to a new month at midnight though, so we’re back to full speed.