In a couple of days it will be eight years since I started this blog. It has brought me some great adventures and new friends, and it has acted as a repository for my memories. I sometimes go back through it to look things up, and get lost reading my own adventures. (Tell me - is this weird? Or maybe I'd rather not know...)
Since I entered the most concentrated phase of my PhD work in the last couple of years I haven't blogged as much. My mind, you could say, is elsewhere. And I have been remiss - I promised pictures of your recent trip to NZ but didn't post them. I may get to this in the next few days because for the next four weeks I am a full-time PhD student. WHich means, of course, that procrastination will be my middle name. (Seriously? No. I have to get this thesis knocked into order and get it OUT OF MY LIFE! There will be NO PROCRASTINATION!)
Over this Christmas break both Sandra and I have been sewing, something I always enjoy greatly but don't ever seem to find the time for. We picked up some cotton fabric bargains in NZ, and have recently disovered a couple of fabric shops in Sydney. I have enjoyed the satisfaction of making something so much that I intend to it more regularly. I will post later with some details of what I've been making. Actually, I see that the second post I ever made on this blog was about sewing - the curtains I made for this house. Gosh, the house looks different now - here's a pic I took today. No electricity meter on the front, more decoration on the verandha, fence and gate have gone, steps are wider and not as steep.
Sadly, Sandra had to go to Brisbane a couple of days ago. Her mother (now aged 90) has fallen, and is in hospital with a gashed leg. As we have just had Christmas at home for the first time in three years (Sandra's brother did the Christmas visit for the first time) I can't begrudge her mother the time, of course, but it is hard. We were having such a lovely time, sewing and reading and cooking together, and had simple but important plans for New Year's Eve. (And, from an early entry on my blog, I also see that when I was about to have cataract surgery in 2004 an emergency required Sandra to attend her mother on the same day... and then there was my emergency achilles surgery surgery in 2007 a week after which... never mind.)
I use my blog as a memory check all the time. A year or so ago a friend mentioned how we had gone to see a show at the opera house. I had absolutely no memory of the show at all. Nothing. I looked it up on my blog and there it was, and all the memories came flooding back. Maybe this is our protection against old-age memory loss?
Posted by: JamesOBrienAU | January 01, 2012 at 06:36 PM