I wish I could regale you with more funny anecdotes about the countdown to being a parent, but I have been in Moomba for the last 7 days, so I've got nothing. Karen might have something, but I doubt it, she is starting to feel a bit less nauseous, so nothing interesting.

Fortunately, it was my last trip to the desert for the year, and thank god. I set a new personal record, I managed to work 22, that's right twenty two hours on Sunday. Holy cow, that takes it out of you, but when its a choice between that and missing the plane home, well a man's got to do what a man's got to do.

Of course, it also had a lot to do with a pig not arriving when it was supposed to. (That would make you wonder if you were a first timer here! Oh alright, here's a link)

Not a great deal else to report really. Except that the power supply in my PC blew up for some reason. No short term impediment for a geek like me with a work laptop to use as a backup, but still a pain in the arse nonetheless.

So I pulled it apart, expecting to find a blown fuse. Which I did, except that the bugger is soldered in! What the? I thought the idea of a fuse is that it is supposed to be a replaceable component to protect all of the non replaceable components. Grrr, I am a mechanical engineer, I can operate a screw driver, but a soldering iron is beyond my clumsy fingers.

I might sound like I am filling now, but it's my blog and I'll fill if I want to. Anyway, I have been listening to a bit of net radio lately, which is pretty cool, especially a station called Swiss Groove. OK, I admit if you are not into chill out type music you are going to hate it, but if that is you then you can take your Nickleback albums and piss off.

As the terse last entry suggested, Karen and I are on the road to parenthood. I had been wondering how to approach this topic blogwise for a few days, I wanted to do it sort of subtly so only those really paying attention would get it at first. Maybe change the description, slip it into a long rant about some movie, put it onto the bottom of the sidebar or something equally sneaky. However, another news(?) source, cough, Steve, cough, broke the story so I had to just get it out there.

It's weird at the moment because for me, everything still seems sort of normal. Karen is of course as far away from normal as a Hollywood blockbuster sequel that doesn't suck. While, to the casual observer she doesn't look pregnant as yet, there are some common pregnancy symptoms which, in combination, produce some bizarre reactions.

Take for instance, a heightened sense of smell, combined with standard pregnancy nausea. This morning, in bed, I let fluffy off of the chain. Now while I will admit it was a bit stinky, Karen very nearly vomited from the smell, which secretly I derive a bit of pride from.

Another great example is that pregnant women often are very fussy about what they eat. Combine this with a few pregnancy hormones and you get a woman who cries because she can't decide what she wants for dinner!

Last week while I was away, I read a book called "So You're Going to be a Dad", by a very witty history teacher by the name of Peter Downey. On the surface this book seems light hearted, but its real mission is to scare living shit out of you, and I will admit that my level of concern has upped a notch since finishing it. Surely though it's not that bad though*cue knowing smiles from all my father friends*

Finally, in non baby news, I got further confirmation this week that Adelaide is a tiny little in bred town. Karen's old friend Penny was out at a club a few weeks ago, where she met a nice fella. She went on a bit of a date with him, and afterwards got invited back to his house. She accepted kindly, and when she got there, she had an alarming sense of de ja vu. Why? Because she was at our Magill house, currently being rented by her new boyfriend! Amazing...

....We're having a baby!

We held our first open inspection on the Aldinga house last weekend.

It wasn't what you'd call a booming success, the house was open both days, and managed to attract a grand total of 5 parties, none of whom I'd call prospective buyers. As a matter of a fact, I think our add in the paper has attracted the interest of more real estate agents than buyers at this stage.

Then I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a bunch of real estate sharks are circling, hoping that we will be easy prey. They obviously don't know Karen if they think they can just call up with a hard sell....

It is two weeks before Christmas, so people are more interested in buying gifts than houses, so for now at least the beach property stays in our hands.

In other news, I am away from home again. This time in Wollongong, on a conference discussing new rules regarding pipelines. I have been here for a couple of days, and you will be surprised to hear that it is yet to yield an amusing anecdote. Not even one. It's just a bunch of engineers in a room in a hotel debating whether the safety factor used when designing pipelines can be decreased, and frankly even I am not self indulgent enough to think anyone other than a pipeline engineer cares.

I'm sure there was more I was going to mention, but right now it's late and I've got nothing. Between our trip and work at the moment, I have been traveling almost continuously for 17 weeks, and it's starting to take its to take its to take its toll on my creativity. I have this underlying fatigue that I will only be able to shake by a week or so of doing nothing.

Hopefully Christmas will deliver that for me.

I know, I know, updates on this blog have been a little slow. That's not because we have been laying idle, far from it indeed. It's just that we have been so busy, and here in Moomba, blogger.com is blocked from most internet enabled PC's, so updating has been logistically difficult.

Nevermind though, here I am late at night, on a dodgy dial up line, ready to give you a low down on the various happenings.

First thing I'd like to report on was Brock's 1st birthday. I know it sounds cliche, but it is hard to believe that my nephew is one already, time flies when you're having fun I guess.

The party was a complete blast, lots of kids, lots of cool toys, including some requiring assembly. It may seem perverse to derive enjoyment from having to put a toy together, but I guess you have to be a male engineer to understand. I will admit that I am not a real man though, occasionally I consult the instructions. RTFM as they say in the biz.

Aside from the thrill of the assembly, the afternoon was spent having a few beers and watching the cricket in between playing with the toys that were noisy yet somehow entertaining to 30 year olds. Brock himself found it all a bit overwhelming, and spent a good part of the afternoon asleep. Who can blame him though, he is only 1 and after all, it was his party and I guess he could do whatever the hell he wanted.

I have been spending a ridiculous amount of time in Moomba of late, paying penance for the 11 weeks in total I have had off work this year. The little time I have had at home I have been helping Karen in getting the Aldinga house ready for our first open inspection coming up this weekend. Its pretty exciting, and yet a little scary. Its scary in that sort of opening-night-of-a-performance kind of way, we have done a lot of hard work, and now it gets evaluated by the public.

I hope public opinion of our work is high enough to coax one person to part with 295,000 clams in exchange for the privilege of owning the place. I guess we will soon find out.