The Lurker from the black lagoon

Mariane - have a wongerful day on your birthday.
I hope your boys let you get on the computer to read all of your birthday messages.

Hey Mariane, Enjoy yourself today of all days

HAppy Birthday mariane, have a special day. I've always wondered what a Barooga was and now I know. Love ya

Just popped in quickly to wish you a very

Mariane, Hope you have a wonderful year.

to you
to you
dear Marianne
to you

Hope you enjoyed the day sitting by the seashore with lots of presents.

Gday Mariane, just passing, thought I'd drop in.
Miss seeing you around the place. Pop into easy sometime and say gday.
Take care,
Gail

Wishing you all the very best for the Festive Season

Mariane, Hope you have a wonderful day.

Mariane...have a great day.

Hello Mariane! - to you! I hope you have a wonderful day. I have brought you a bouquet of flowers and left them on your table.

Happy Birthday Mariane. Hope you have a wonderful day.

nice sunny winter day here, nice day to be outside - I hope you are enjoying your special day, Have fun, Mary

Mariane,with many more to follow.

Mariane!
Hope your day is filled with happy surprises!

Hope your day is full of love, laughter and happiness, best wishes & cheers.

Mariane, a very to you.

May this day bring everything you desire.

Mariane, I just noticed it's your birthday. Well, to ya, girl friend. Are these enough candles ? Anything else you want? And for the coming year,

Marianne hope you have had a safe birthday with family and friends.

Hi Marianne. I'm long overdue in stopping by to see how all is going in your little piece of the world. Have you repaired your 'handle on life' yet? I do hope so, and I hope all is well with you and yours! Cheers!

Hi Mariane, I see you've been checking out my photos. My computer (here at work) pops up to tell me I've received an email, so I knew you were wending your way through my piccies.
I had the same problem as you, getting computer time at home, until I bought myself a laptop. Only hubby is allowed to use it (or #2 son when he does his internet banking). Of course, I do most of my internet chatting etc at work. I'm stuck in front of the damn thing all day long, so when I have some time I catch up on sudoku.
I know I should google it but where is Barooga?

Hi Mariane

thanks for the birthday wishes. Yes, we are "on the land", 23 acres, 5 minutes walk from Mebbin National Park and we can see 3 other National Parks from our house - pretty sweet place to live. It is also the wettest area in NSW, so even when it is dry it is not too bad :) doesn't mean there are no fires though haha. I will look up Barooga - have no idea where that is...

Marianne, thanks for the greeting. I've kind of lurking for a while. Let's see, oz is starting to warm up now, right? We've been getting snow in the high country already, with the natural and the man-made, they have already opened a couple of ski lifts. I don't ski. I live down in a large valley on the west side, and we have had a couple of dalliances with frost, but not serious enough to kill my pecan harvest or my last paw-paw fruits.

Hope you are having a lovely spring, not too hot.

well, there you go - we drove from Mildura to Albury via Echuca in (ummm, I think) 1978-79. It was January, so quite warm hehe. And sparse. And salty - I remember the salty crystalline layer on top of the soil.

This area is definitely different - we live in the erosion caldera of the Mt Warning volcano - so we are surrounded by mountains. We have mostly fruit trees - a lot of sub-tropical stuff (including coffee and mangoes). It is green and lovely and often humid with fairly mild winters. If it ever snows here, I'm heading further north :)

So what do you guys do for a crust?

haha, yes, I know that saying - I teach Science at TAFE (second-chance ed). I don't know how accurate the saying is - not everyone can teach!

We have 3 kids - two adult boys and a daughter who is 17 and in her second-last year at school. Our eldest is 22 and is in the police force (in More...

Sydney). Our middle child is 20 and in his first year at uni in Brisbane. So, I guess they are not little guys any more (sigh).

I am not even thinking about retirement yet. Turned 50 last week and don't feel old enough yet haha.

How old are your boys? And how big is your school? Our local primary school had between 90-115 kids - varied from year to year. It was a great little school for our kids.

Snap

I have never taught in a preschool or a primary school, but have had a chance to be a parent volunteer (in both) regularly when they were young, as I work part-time. I have taught in high school a long time ago, but have been at TAFE for almost 16 years. Most of my students are 15-16. I could never work with small children for any length of time - so emotionally demanding (though I had a great time with my kids when they were small - but I didn't have to "work" with them). Other people cannot envision working with teenagers, huh? I love their cheeky independence.

The whole holiday thing is so funny - I have often come across people who say teachers have far too much time off. What the heck do they know - we need to break just to stay sane. Prep and marking take up a lot of time. I have heard my kids tell people they'd never consider teaching, because the job goes home with you. Our middle child told someone once "Mum never switches off".

The police force suits our eldest to the ground - he loves it! I think it is the mixture of constant work and constant challenge that he finds interesting. The down point is that about 40% of his work seems to be domestic violence. He only finished his studies last December, so is still a probationary constable (for another 2 months I think). He is getting married in January.

So where does your husband teach? I hope you get some rain - we had a lovely thunderstorm last night.

uh huh - I have two projects I am working on that need to be finished by the end of this semester. They are taking up quite a bit of my holiday time :) My choice...

Our son gets married in January in Sydney and they are also doing their own thing. Most of us are going down a bit over one week beforehand (we are driving my parents down), but our daughter is flying to Sydney 3 weeks before the wedding as she is one of the people performing the music. She needs time to practice with the others. Our future daughter-in-law is also studying full-time, but finishes her course at the end of the year.

Our son trained at UWS for two and a half years - policing course and then did the last semester in Goulburn. He could have fast-tracked, but I'm glad he didn't. I think people need a bit more life experience to do this sort of job.

There was a bad storm in Brisbane? I obviously missed the news... we had nothing here, too far south, though the sky looked promising for a while.
Crazy weather? Yep - that's climate change for you! Completely unpredictable. It is very dusty and windy here again - looks like the topsoil from the west is on its way to the Pacific again.

What have you got planned for the rest of the holidays?
Have a lovely day, won't you!

Thanks, Mariane. Your well wishes are so sweet. I'm trying to do what I can, but am still dragging.

Mariane - thanks so much for visiting my page! I looked up Barooga on-line and see that you are a bit north of Melbourne. Is there any chance you can come to the Halloween party we are having at Bean's place (Sat 31/10)? I would love to meet you in person. I'm very excited about my trip.
I plan on spending a lot of money down-under!
Cheers!

Hi Mariane
Conference wasn't too bad actually. First time I've used an electronic agenda. I thought it might be difficult finding all the attachments for agenda items. Was the Annual Conference of the Australian National Kennel Council. I did drink a little too much white wine on Saturday night but dinner was at the hotel, the Batman Hills on Collins.
Cheers
Saylz

Hi Mariane...dropped by to say you must be due for a trip to the city and Halloween sounds like a good time to me... I see that Vici has beaten me to it.
Ciao

How's the new dishwasher treating you? You may not "winge" (to me that rhymes with hinge and singe), but I'll "whine" that I haven't had a working dishwasher for more than 1 year out of the last 25 and I want one really, really badly. A big one that will do stock kettles and cookie sheets and one that doesn't leave gunk all over the dishes.

Thank you Marianne for your kind wishes. SLC stands for Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Just on the other side of our fine planet. How's Spring treating you?

Thanks for the kind words. I've been playing Sudoku on here for awhile, just finally signed up! Hope you have a great day!

Hi Mariane.
I thought that was the case with Gator.He/she can have 4 birthdays a year instead of 2.hehe
Nice of you to drop into my page.Hope life is treating you well.

Well that was thoughtful of you Mariane. Thank you for the flowers! I am about 85% with regard to the 'sniffles' but feeling much better. Hope all is well with you and yours. Cheers!

Hi Mariana
Thanks for the birthday greetings, can believe one more year to my 50th, hope you and your family are well.

Thanks for your sensitive concern about my current reactive depression.

Hi Marianne... if pun had been intended you would have spealt been with an 'a'...
It is such a relief to have the exams and school all over and done with... didn't stop me waking up on Monday wondering if he was awake and ready for school... I think this reality may take a while to get used to. Hope Lukes final exams yesterday went well. Luke is probably like Lachie ... he declared 2 weeks of sleeping in and doing zilch was the order of the day... I'm hoping to get some jobs done around here once he gets past this stage. I'm counting on there being a return to winter before summer really sets in...
Ciao for now

Just dropping in for my first visit, Marianne, and to leave you a bottle of Niagara riesling. I loved your comment on yesterday's "easy" and you're not alone in your thoughts. Enjoy this community of neat people!