Sunday 28 June 2015
We’ve had our used moving boxes picked up, and we’ve returned my overdue library books from Glebe. We’ve hung the pictures we haven’t seen in three years because the previous place didn’t have hooks. There’s things we aren’t on top of (at least two lights need electrical work) but on the basics we really are moved in now.
We had our housewarming party last weekend. That and my then-missing photos hard drive motivated the bulk of the box unpacking. I like to occasionally have parties and invite a huge number of people that I know. In lieu of culling the guest list, I give fairly short notice. We live in a short street, which made it easy to invite the new neighbours too. It fell on the solstice. I used to have solstice barbecues up at Balls Head Reserve and heat mulled wine in a pot on the electric barbecues in the dark. Not since V was born. But since the housewarming was on June 21, we made mulled wine in the crockpot and had heated party pies and sausage rolls. The latter used to be a welcome treat on dive boats, served with mugs of instant soup, restoring our body temperature between dives.
The next two weeks are school holidays, which will be less of a contrast for V than they were for us. He’s spending the two weeks in his usual after school care provider, in their full day vacation care program. They do a lot of excursions and activities and generally contribute to the school holiday crowding in public places. We’re visiting my family for a weekend but not otherwise going away because we’re going to the snow in September (if there is snow this year). For a while my life will be mainly house things.
We aren’t far from an adult education centre, so I’d like to enrol in a few courses over the next couple of years. Music, studio photography… And I’m excited about the possibilities of a house I can change over time. The biggest project I can imagine is getting the back courtyard substantially redesigned. There’s a lot of small stuff that can go before that though. I’ve even joined Pinterest to track inspiration; I’m reminded that in my Wikimania keynote in 2012 the issue of women using Pinterest rather than editing Wikipedia came up once or twice, which now seems mostly odd, since one is an encyclopedia and the other is a visual inspiration bookmarking site. Probably my “find interesting pictures of courtyards” moments will not overlap terribly much with my “find sources for recent Australian crimes” moments.