Jeez, it has been a long time since I updated, and a lot has happened since then. It's one of those cruel ironies that when you are busy doing stuff that is makes for good blogging, you are too busy actually doing it to write about it.

Now however, I am comfortable in Brisbane airport waiting out a 3 hour stop over with a coffee and a muffin, so I suggest you get similarly comfortable because this will very likely be quite long.

Right then, on the entry below you can see some photos from our second ultrasound, showing Wigglebum in all her glory. You will notice that I say her, and that is because I am confident that Wigglebum is a girl. I have no scientific foundation for this confidence, I am just sure I am right, and you can sue me if I'm not. But I am right, so you'd better make sure your lawyers have some other work to do.

Keen readers will remember that I didn't want the ultrasound technician (or sonographer) to actually tell me Wigglebum's sex, but I was determined that I was going to work it out for myself. The first factor that confounded that plan was that the hospital wouldn't get me a tape of the ultrasound, due to fear of litigation. This ruled out the frame by frame analysis. The second problem was that Darren the friendly neighborhood ultrasound technician claimed he couldn't work it out either.

Which could of course mean one of two things, that a) he could work it out but was being polite for Karen's sake, or b) that Wigglebum was a bit modest and wasn't out to show us her bits.

Anyway, after watching the screen and analyzing the prints, the result is firmly inconclusive. However, against all my engineering training and instincts I have formed an opinion anyway, even though I know it is baseless. We have a child, and for now her name is Wigglebum.

Getting away from babies for the time being, we have made two trips to the Rancho in as many weekends. The first trip was to return Steve's fridge that had been on long term loan to us for use in the Aldinga house. The second was a drop in on the way home from our Easter camping trip with Lea, Jon and Lucy to Wilmington.

The camping trip contained an experience that could only be referred to as "blogging gold". Here is an account of that experience.

On Saturday, we decided it would be nice if we went for a bit of a look at Alligator Gorge. On arrival at the carpark, Jon and I had a cursory look at the trail signs, and they showed a 2.2km loop walk and a 9 km loop walk. Since we had a 10 month old girl and a 5 month pregnant women in our party, we decided that it would be prudent to only attempt the short walk.



Off we toddled, Lucy happily riding in Jon's backpack, on a mild day in the mid 20's with only a 600ml bottle of water each. This would be plenty, we were only off for a lazy sight seeing stroll after all. We got a little way into the walk and realized we left the map in the car, but who needs a map? There would be signs. Wouldn't there?



Anyway to cut a very bloody long story short, in our cockiness at being competent "outdoors" types, we ended up on the long loop rather than the short loop. We didn't of course realize this till it was far too late. I mean after all, we had 30 something years of scouting between us, we couldn't be wrong.



It turned out the first sign we did see was on that said "loop track - 30 mins", which was a bit of a relief after 2 hours of walking and almost no water left. It did seem a bit strange that the sign at the start said allow two hours, and we had done 2 and weren't finished. Usually, in South Australian national parks at least, allow 2 hours means "allow 45 minutes unless you have one leg". We did have a baby and Karen was pregnant, so it was probably right we told ourselves.

However after we walked the 30 minutes, we were presented with a sickening reality. We were tired, out of water and still another 4.2kms away from the car. Fortunately we met with a group of 11 others at the top of the hill, who helped us out with some water and some food for Karen.



All of us couldn't have been more embarrassed. He we were, a group of people who are well traveled, responsible outdoorsy scouting gear freak types, having to ask for extra water from casual tourists. We had turned into the sort of people we pride ourselves in not being, reckless and stupid rubbernecks.

As it turned out, the group of people we met was loveliest group you would want to meet, very helpful and far less judgmental than I would have been if I was them. Also the walk back was a lazy downhill stroll down a fire track and only took another hour, but it wouldn't have wanted to be much further let me tell you.

Needless to say, we ended up with a pretty big tab at the Wilmington hotel, after buying drinks for everyone. I am still ashamed of myself that I needed others to help us out, but all's well that ends well I guess.

On the way home from Wilmington, we again dropped in to the Rancho for a quick BBQ with Steve, Louise, our friends from Canberra Tara and Nick, and Humpy who is in Oz for a visit. OK, so Humpy didn't actually get there until we left, but we managed to catch him on Tuesday so it was all good.

Here they are, sit tight for a full update soon.



A clear view of the wigglebum's skull



Side profile



Eye showing lens

First of all, my apologies for not having any pictures from our scan this week up yet, but we don't have the internet at Magill yet, for reasons I can't even be bothered going into. Of course I could scan the photo at home and then put it on my laptop and bring it to work and post it, but I was far too busy over the weekend with other exciting projects.

Projects such as the construction of the Dog and Slobber brewery, just behind the famous Dog and Slobber bar.

I spent most of the weekend cleaning out the shed, playing with power tools and swearing, but at 4pm, Sunday 13 March 2005 the yeast was pitched on the first D&S lager. As I write this on Monday morning, it is happily bubbling away, and should be ready for bottling around Thursday or Friday. The instructions say it takes another 14 days or so in the bottle before it is ready to drink, which right now feels like a lifetime away.

Hopefully I have done everything right and soon I will have 20 odd litres of delicious beer.

I will post some photos soon, but for now the D&S brewery is a fairly simple operation, with scope for future upgrades. I hope to one day get it as fancy as this guy, a true beacon to home brewing nerds. I mean, he has online telemetry! No wonder his nickname is Grog.

Jason nominated me for this game slash interview thingo, so here we go.

Total amount of music files on your computer?

Somewhere in the high 40's (GB) on my home PC, with smaller subsets of that collection on my laptop and mp3 player. Of course once I get the new mp3 player I am saving up for, the iriver H340, one of those subsets will be much larger.

The last cd you bought was...

"Midnight Oil" by Midnight Oil. I am an Oils fan from way back, and have just read Mark Dodshon's Biopic on the band "Bed's are Burning". It occured to me that the blue meanie was the only album I didn't have on CD, so I had to rush out and buy it. Actually I rushed out, realised that no real record shop actually carried it anymore, and ended up ordering it on line.

What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?

It was a cover of the Supertramp classic "Give a Little Bit" by those masters of middle of the road schmaltz, the Go Go Dolls. I heard it from the guy in the cube next to me who insists on having his radio loud enough so the whole office can hear the commercial BS station he likes to listen to. The worst thing was, the announcer got on air after the song was over and made this statement (paraphrased)

"I never thought much of Supertramp, but that is just a fantastic version".

Fantastic version?!? It sounds exactly the same, only with crappier sounding acoustic guitar. What is the point of doing a cover if you are not going to present a new take on the song? A great man once said (again, paraphrased) "If you are going to do a cover, you should treat the song like you wrote it".

Hang on, is this waxing cynical? Whoops sorry, I'll move on.

What new music are you really excited for in the coming year so far?

I hear The Whitlams have a new CD out this year. Mostly however, music will be released, some of it I will like, some of it I won't. I find you have a better time in life with low expectations.

Now I'm supposed to nominate 3 other people to do this. OK, I know more than 3 people, so sort it out amongst yourselves.

As you may have noticed, my brief holiday in Eromanga (that's sarcasm kids, my visit was neither brief nor a holiday) has thrown the countdown out of kilter. It's around 20 1/2 weeks to go now.

Karen has her first pre-natal class this evening, and this one is a no husband type affair. Not entirely sure why, but maybe there is some mention of the secret women's business of why they always attend public toilets in pairs.

Wednesday will see our second ultrasound, which I am pretty excited about. The second scan is the one where you can find out what the gender of your child is. This is a bit of a tricky issue, Karen definitely doesn't want to know, and whilst I don't want the nurse to tell me the answer, it's not going to stop me from using all the analytical skill I can muster on the tape to try to work it out.

I will post some photos here, and you can all try to decide for yourself.

In accomodation news, we are now fully moved out of the Aldinga property and back home at Magill. We are still in the process of unpacking boxes, but the good news is that the Dog and Slobber bar is back open for business.

Back down south, the real estate agent held an open inspection and got almost instant success - an offer! It's a low ball, which is what I would expect, because that is what I would (or at least Karen would) do. The people seemed to really like the place so we will see how negotiations go this week, I hope we can get them up to a reasonable price and do a deal.

Thanks again go to our families, and our friends Kylie and Kym, who helped lug our stuff across town again.

Being back at Magill is funny. It doesn't feel strange, or good to be home, or anything. It just feels normal. It just feels like we never left.