www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q

And a great one, at that. Written and sung by Tim Minchin, musical comedian extraordinaire. You should definitely listen to this version, and NOT the one sung by Kate Miller-Heidke on this year’s Spirit of Christmas CD, which is insipid compared to the original.

We spent a couple of days down in Melbourne over March/April.

We had a trip to Dora Creek with Steph, Eva, Denzil and Lu in March.

We had a trip to Nelson Bay over Easter.

We’ve been busy with work.

And of course, the main reason why we’ve been busy is our new son:

Bryson Luke Burton
3.89kg (8.9 pounds)
50cm
Born 27/5/2009, 2.25am

Sleeping soundly:

Sleeping Bryson

Getting burped after a big feed:

Burping Bryson

We posted more photos on Facebook as well.

He’s been home now for 3 days, and we’re still getting used to the night-time feeds. Last night I had probably 5 hours sleep over three intervals between 11pm and 7am… he’s been pretty good though, hasn’t cried much and generally he’s only interested in eating and sleeping. We can tell he’s hungry when he wakes up and gets all fidgety, and we can tell he’s sleepy when he starts drifting off and closing his eyes.

We’ve had two outings so far, one to the community centre in Crows Nest, and another down to the little cafe near Wollstonecraft Station. It’s a pity it’s so wet and grey, but the weekend is looking better for sunshine and blue skies. We can’t wait to let him out in the sun.

Matthew Hayden has announced his retirement from international cricket nearly 15 years after he was presented with his baggy green cap.”

Looks like Hayden has been moved from his usual spot in slips to that most famous of fielding positions, Left Right Out.

Only to find, when I checked the website, that the expiration was actually the very last day of 2008, five days earlier.

Damn!

But I filled it in anyway, and a good thing I did, since it was actually honoured. I got the remittence notice via email today.

The signs are more ominous when feeling hot and sweaty, even in an air-conditioned office. I think I’m coming down with something.

An even worse day is the above combined with having to present a training course to a number of clients. The combination of having to talk a lot, and be switched on all day, is incredibly tiring.

But luckily today turned out really well. My throat wasn’t too sore. The students attending were excited by some of the new features in the product training, and that excitement tends to rub off on the trainer too! I can’t wait to go out to their site next week and help put into place some of the things that came up in the class today.

Now I only need to get through tomorrow’s class with a new group of students, and it’ll be the weekend!

“Hey,” I’d ask. “Have you seen the wrapping paper/sticky tape/scissors/car keys/mobile phone charger?”

“It should be there. Have you had a boy look or a girl look?”

“Oh yeah, here it is.”

“A boy look. Right.”

So annoying.

If you’ve never heard the terms before, they are both evidently dreamt up by a woman. A “boy look” refers to a search for a regular household object that comes up empty. A “girl look” is the subsequent look, usually by the girl, following the pronouncement by the boy, that the object cannot be found, where is it, you must’ve moved or hidden it. Incredibly enough, the object just somehow happens to be in the same place that the boy was just looking.

Huh.

But of course, the reason why men give up so easily is that they assume the object has been moved or hidden, usually by the woman in their life, in order to make them look bad and terribly short-sighted.

Overcrowding will become accepted practice on triple the number of CityRail trains under a NSW Government bid to make its performance figures look good.

CityRail aims for no more than 5 per cent of trains to carry a “crush load”.

But bureaucrats want to extend that target to 17 per cent after a review revealed 16 per cent of services in 2007-08 ran with such a load – whereby passengers exceed 135 per cent of seating capacity.

Just to summarise:

The official regulator target for overcrowding is no more than 5% of train services at overcrowding, which is 135% of seated capacity.

The current figures show that 16% of services are over the capacity target.

NSW Labor’s solution? Make the target 17%. Problem solved!

The next state election, 2011, the next chance to vote this bunch of idiots out, is more than 2 years away.

*sigh*

Since we were hardly drinking, the only real excitement of the night came when the sliding screen door to the apartment was accidentally locked… with everyone outside on the balcony, we were locked out! Luckily, we were able to take the screen door off its railing, so didn’t have to call out to the neighbours (who were out anyway), or jump down to the front door of the apartment building.

We walked down to the bridge near Wollstonecraft station at around 11.30pm, and it was packed. After ten minutes, we weren’t even able to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge from our vantage point (though we could see the fireworks just fine). The crowd was happy and boisterous without being obnoxious or drunk.

And we finally got to bed at around 2.30am.

Hope your new years was good, too.

We arrived back at Lindisfarne to find our relatives and loved ones looking out the window – not at us, but at the incident down the road, in which a crazy/druggy woman jumped on the bonnet of her boyfriend’s car as he roared off up the road. See what happens when we leave? The whole place, gone to rack and ruin.

Other relatives and loved ones rushing up to lay their hands on Kathleen’s stomach, only to stop short in disappointment when they realise that she’s not quite that far along.

We have something to aspire to: the 500,000th Tasmanian had recently been born…

The family received a food hamper, certificate, travel voucher and carton of beer.

This provided much inspiration for the cartoonists in the paper the next 3 days straight.

Lunch at Muir’s is still awesomely good. Hartz lemon lime mineral water also awesomely good. Am assuming La Bella Pizza, the pizza so good it resolved an uprising at Risdon Prison, is still awesome. At the other end of the scale, none of the Banjo’s ‘restaurants’ that we went into had pasties available – this makes it two trips to Hobart in a row where this has happened. For shame, Banjo’s, for shame.

We went out with Darise, but there was no one else we knew at Knoppy’s on Christmas Eve – we seem to no longer be the generation that goes there. Apparently the Telegraph, formerly Brooke Street, is the place to be. We had a few drinks at Quarry Bar, to which my sister went “Pfft. Bloody yuppies.” That’s the price you pay for no longer living in Hobart – disdain. Realisation too that I’ve lived in Sydney for longer in my adult life than I did in Hobart.

I can’t remember whether I’d ever been to Maldini’s before, but that place has amazing coffee and cake late at night. In fact, it might even be the only place open for coffee and cake – excluding Jellies and the casino (and Hobartians will laugh knowingly) – at night.

Christmas lunch and dinner, and Boxing Day lunch were the usual fantastic food and family extravaganzas – the new New Years resolution is no food until March.

We went to the Taste. Avoided getting burnt – it was a warm, sunny day – despite sitting outside thanks to generous latherings of sunscreen. Of course, Tassie weather being what it is, we also had cold rain and winds during the course of a few hours.

The Taste still suffers from a lack of sufficient seating and the subsequent “Hey, are those seats taken?” whenever any of your friends leave their seats to get more food.

You know its Hobart when you pay $1 at the car park in the centre of town for 3 hours, and the attendant thanks you “Have a good one, champ.” You also know it’s Hobart when people will rather drive around for an hour to find a free park, albeit one where their car sits outside in the sun roasting for the entire day, rather than pay a grand total of $3 for undercover parking.

No more Believe Bars on sale, at least that we could see – Tasmania, don’t tell me you’ve given up hope??