During the school holidays, I was quite busy at work, and was unable to take any extra time off to spend with the family like I usually do.  Mon was working day shift of the weekend in the middle, and like half an hour before she was due to leave she dragged us out to the car to explain how she wanted it cleaned.  I’m like “Are you serious?  I think your overstepping a bit explaining how you want your car cleaned.” But when we got out there to start grabbing some junk out, we find an itinerary for a weekend away sitting on the seat.  Surprise!  This was to make up for me not getting to spend much time with them, and she’d done an amazing job of keeping it secret, including even packing a suitcase and getting it to the car through the loungeroom while we were in there playing playstation.

So off we went, about five minutes later.

First stop was the Discovery Centre, which is a fun science place in the style of Scienceworks or Questacon.  As well as the assorted little science stations, we watched the Explosions show, with a variety of flaming and pressure based explosions.  We were so inspired that I bought a Geyser Tube, a clever device for doing the Mentos+Coke experiment.  We’ve done this at home and videoed it, so you might get to see us doing it at some point.  Also, because we like to chat to people and it was a quiet day, we got talking to the guy at the front desk, who asked whether they had done the Milo Silo experiment.  We hadn’t seen it, and he was kind enough to take us back and show us.  We’re going to do this one soon too, so I don’t want to spoil it, but there will be flames!

The Discovery Centre also has the tallest drop slide in the southern hemisphere – it’s a sheer drop seven metres, you reach up to 40kmh in freefall.

Drop slide - too fast for photos

Connor had many goes on this

Connor went on this about 17 times.  I got on it, you hold on to a bar, slide down to hanging from the bar, then let go.  Hanging from the bar I pretty much changed my mind, but it was kind of too late.  So I had one go.

In the afternoon, we went to the Golden Dragon Museum. Many people from China came to Bendigo for the gold rush era and stayed, and in spite of 50+ years of the White Australia policy many remained, so the city still has a strong presence of people with Chinese ancestry. There is a beautiful Chinese Garden:

Spacious

Also Romantic

Inside the museum proper is interesting stuff about life on the goldfields, and the migration from China to Bendigo and Victoria in general. There is an array of amazingly beautiful furniture and household items brought from China. It was difficult to get good photos as you weren’t allowed to use a flash, and we had a cheap point and shoot that we had bought that morning on account of forgetting our camera so hadn’t worked out all the buttons and settings, but we got some.

I think the flash accidentally went off

Ash is not tall, but this bed would be too small for her

Obviously the highlight, especially for Connor, is the collection of Chinese Dragons:

Loong the Dragon

More Dragons

That was Saturday. Sunday morning, all you can eat breakfast at the Hotel Shamrock (hello bacon induced heart attack!) followed by mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral. The cathedral is beautiful of course, the kids were particularly interested in the carved angels on the ceiling, which reminded them of Weeping Angels in Dr Who, but the highlight for me was the pipe organ, which was played just stunningly by someone who clearly knew it well and made fll use of the range of tones in a good pipe organ. I highly recommend going to hear it, although we all highly recommend going when it’s warmer…

Nobody was harmed by these angels

Stained Glass Window and Pipe Organ. Can you identify the people in the window? We only got three...

Last on the itinerary was a place called Confectionery Capers. This is one man’s lifetime hobby, building and tinkering little machines that demonstrate various mechanical principles. It’s in a giant shed, and it’s a whirling, mind boggling chaotic orchestra of motion, toys and vehicles and things on the ceiling all powered off a generator at one side and driving by a network of belts and gears and pulleys and stuff across the ceiling.

It's a dead set madhouse

As you walk around there are also a hundred odd individual displays, where you can push a button on the fence to activate them. This is where Confectionery comes in, as the displays are built with chocolate and lollies and chupa-chups and whatnot. We were amazed by some of the retro chocolate packaging – remember when a block of Caramello came in a bright orange wrapper? So amazed we were, we forgot to take photos of them.

It was great fun to watch

You may have noticed the little items scattered between the machines. The place is clearly designed by a man who believes that too many dad-jokes are never enough, there are literally hundreds of little 3d rebuses made of doll and toy parts, as well as wall to wall puns on cards, chock full of groaners. Click the pictures below to see full size versions so you can truly appreciate the majesty!

Yay Puns!

Here comes the Jelly Bean train

Hi Family!

There were just so many it’s impossible to say what the best were, or to even photograph them all, but here’s a couple that caught our eye.

Alternating Currants

A Swing and a Miss

A piece of string walks into a bar...

So that was our weekend away. Bendigo is quite big and there’s plenty more to do, so we hope to get back there one day and do some more stuff.

I wore my good clothes because it was a special occasion, and my stole. Mum and Dad designed and cut out the picture of the cup with the host, and Aunt Andrea embroidered it on.

I was happy that people had contributed to such a great mass for me and all the first Eucharist people that day.  I was excited and a little bit nervous.  Our friend Rosey gave me the wine and I was very pleased that she wanted to do that for me.

Lots of our good friends came to the party afterwards.

As many of you know, Mon began studying law last year, through Deakin University off-campus.  People have asked about how her eyes are going with all that reading, how her brain is going holding all that info in, how her hand feels after all the writing and so on.

The real killer though is on the back and neck.  Hunched over the desk perusing case records, academic textbooks and acts of parliament for hours at a time, it’s the upper vertebrae that take the beating.  We looked into what book holding devices are available, but it turns out not much.  There are lots like the recipe book holders for your kitchen that tilt your book up at desk height, but very few that lift the height of the book to an ergonomic height. You can get the excellent looking Levo Book Holder, however the standalone version is ~$450; the desk mounted one was less, but still quite expensive and also it was a several month wait to get them.

So while it can sometimes be a several month wait to get me to make or even fix something, that seemed to be the way to go.  So when Dad was down on the weekend, he and I threw some ideas around, particular the rail and wingnut setup that Dad knew of from my brother Dan’s art easel. We went to the shed, looked at what we had available, then had an excuse for a trip to Bunnings for a sausage in bread some wood and other bits I needed. Unfortunately, Mum and Dad had to go home before we could put it together, but I finished it off today and, well, it works.  There’s a lot more love in it than craftsmanship, but it also didn’t fall over under the weight of the Annotated Criminal Legislation of Victoria, so I’m calling it a success.

It holds heavy legal tomes

The finish leaves some to be desired, but I wanted to make sure it was fit for purpose before doing anything like that, so that any adjustments can be made without scratching the varnish etc :)  There’s a 20″ iMac behind it for scale – as you can see it’s not small but it’s not uncomfortably huge I hope.  You can adjust the height of the actual holder with bolt and wingnut setups, that slide between the rails on the sides.  It can go reasonably high, as Dad thought it could be useful in the kitchen that way too.

Loosen nut, slide up or down, tighten nut. Not complicated!

You can see there where the wingnut has bitten the soft pine, so I’ll get some washers to go back there at some point.

It’s also got some flexibility as far as the tilt goes, by loosening or tightening the rope that binds the front and back legs.  There’s not a lot of range for that though, as adjusting it too vertical will compromise stability – front and back legs would be too close together.  Likewise tilting it back further increases the footprint on the desk pretty quickly.  Dad and I had talked about options for tilting, but in the end decided that it was making it overly complex, especially since Mon had said she wasn’t too worried about that.

Book holder is admiring itself...

So there it is, designed from scratch and custom built for my lovely wife.

Connor and I like to play Yu-Gi-Oh the card game.  It’s suitably complex for Connor, and still fun compared to Magic: The Gathering which takes a lot of concentration.  We bought ourselves the Yugi and Kaiba starter decks, so we’d have an equally matched set and would have to survive on our wits alone – a criticism of all collector card games is that eventually the kid with the most money will have the best deck and win all the time. It’s also cool cos those two decks are based on the decks in the original  Yu-Gi-Oh manga, which we have (in English!) One of Connor’s best birthday reactions was when we bought him the duel disk, the big arm mounted card holding thing like in the comic and cartoon.

Nerdfest aside, we enjoy playing it for the above reasons, and are reasonably matched.  Ash plays occasionally and wins a few, maybe loses more cos she doesn’t get as much practice.  Mon didn’t really get into it for a few years – it’s takes a bit to get into it, she hadn’t really seen the cartoon, and it was a little nerdy for her, but a year or so ago, she decided maybe she’d like to learn.  So we taught her.  Big mistake.

She has lost one game.  Ever.

As promised, photos of the new car. Click them for full size

Further to the post about Christmas where we couldn’t go to Central Australia because of the car, I didn’t mention that the car also found new and wonderful ways to break down whilst we were in Port. You know how a few minutes after you turn your air-conditioning off in the car the water runs out? Well it wasn’t so much running out as running in. This high level of moisture, combined with the relentless humidity in Port made the interior lining start to fall off… You get the picture?

So anyway, we had been looking into buying a Subaru Outback, and not long after we got back, one came up on Carsales.com.au that fitted the specs we had been told to look for by our awesome mechanic (that’s Chris from New Car Service Centre who has worked on cars for us for about 15 or so years) and just as important – fitted our budget.

What was even more exciting was that when we clicked on the dealer enquiry button, it was in Hawthorn East, about 1/2 hour from home – all good! We therefore in the space of about 72 hours obtained ourselves an ‘06 Subaru Outback, nice blue gray colour, with only 68 000 kms on the clock – oh it’s a 2.5l for those who wish to know those things.

We are very excited and showing it off to everyone. I will go take a photo in a bit and add it here.

Most of you are probably up to date with the fact that we cancelled our proposed trip to Central Australia (or should I say postponed) because the car was not going to make it. Instead we went to Port Macquarie to see Jase’s family.

I had to work Christmas, so we left Boxing Day (“Oh, not good!” as Obi Wan would say) but apart from the trip up (you know traffic is going to be bad when they have set up porta-loos on the side of the road), we had a great time. It rained for the first week, but the thing about rain in Port is that it doesn’t feel the need to get cold to accommodate that, so we were still happily walking around in shorts and t-shirts.

Highlights of the trip were sitting around for hours playing either Monopoly Deal (after the initial problem of no one being sober enough to understand the rules) – great find Nana!, and Texam-Hold Es Poker (again this depended on the amount of alcohol imbibed.

Catching up with all my in laws as per usual meant lots of laughs and the kids were in seventh heaven spending that much time with their aunts, uncles and grandparents.

Hope you all had as much fun over the holiday period as we did.

Oops, I misled you, we didn’t do a cool cake for Ash (although Mon had made an incredibly rich, moist, and large cake for her) but we did for Connor. Connor had a science experiment party, which was fun, so we had to make a volcano cake!

Volcano Cake - with real sparks and erupting lava!

Cross section - notice the magma chamber and vents - this was deliberate!

We didn’t do exciting cakes this year for some reason, but here’s Ash’s cake from last year that we forgot to post! Click on it for big view

Ash’s school had Nude Food Day the other day.  This is a great idea with both health and environmental benefits, which asks kids to bring food that doesn’t have packaging – as well as encouraging the eating of more natural, unprocessed foods, it reduces landfill from all the packaging that is usually in kids lunches.

Excess packaging isn’t just a food problem though. A conversation on the way home from buying some DVDs and CDs at JB HiFi today:

Ash: Man I’m gonna be contributing to landfill with all the plastic wrapping on this stuff.

Jase: JB love to shrink wrap everything.

Ash: Maybe they should have Nude Food Day for other stuff

Jase: You mean like, Nude Movie Day?

Ash: Yeah………..NO!!!