Strangely, the last couple of negative, depressing posts have made my situation seem a bit better. As bad as rainy Mon***s can be, at least I have completed my 2-hr commute and have 3 hours of work under my belt and caffeine is kicking in. Better yet, my boss is out for surgery, his boss is on vacation, her boss has left for another job...so I am in charge of most if the free world. Just sent an email to the Under Secretary and told them that I/we would not be doing a task the directed unless they approved a wavier to the current hiring freeze...Bold move, if I say so myself.

Thanks for cheering me up ...hope you day improves as well!

Other than it being Monday, with me lacking a good night's sleep and having lower back pain, I'm feeling pretty upbeat. Tomorrow, the city inspector is scheduled to look at the new ceiling framing and rough-in electrical, plumbing and gas for our kitchen remodel that's underway. Great progress so far. Knock on wood. :)

No complaints here. Just typical workday. I never really wanted a job, I just wanted a steady paycheck.

Morning Janet, Tweeze, Fint Jim, Glen

Jim, are you having to add sprinklers as a result of the remodel?

Michael, I'm the one who's doing the remodel. No, No need to install sprinklers. Because our remodel is spread out over time (~3 years), and not tearing into too much drywall at a given time, the city isn't requiring the addition of a whole house sprinkler system. At least that's where things stand right now. I asked about the requirements for installing the sprinkler system and the city's head inspector said that only if we opened up more than some percentage of walls would we had to install it.

http://i930.photobucket.com/albums/a...psf6a25e52.jpg
Couldn't give here a bath since its raining :/

I have washed my car several times while it was raining. I did plan to park in the garage when it was clean.

It's not just raining its a full fledged downpour plus thunderstorm right now. :) but hey, come on over, ill watch .

Gtadcundulations. Looks like fun except for the black. Had two black cars, hot hot hot in the summer, and too much trouble keeping clean and purdy.

I probably would have gone with silver myself. I wasn't seeking one out. The mother in law was offering it to me for next to nothing.

Congrats on the "new" car, Janet. SmileWavy

Heck, I'd give you $1000 more than what i paid for my Range Rover for it, despite the color.

I ran several errands at lunch today. There is one area of bridge construction that is a real bottleneck. I took a different route and went west on 9th st. It is a residential street and the speed limit is 25. The cops love to write tickets along there. I was going 25 and some very young driver was right on my bumper the entire way. When we finally got to the light there are two lanes. The speed limit is still 25 but the young speed racer took off and passed me. Big mistake. The cop was waiting. The driver looked like he was 12. I assume he was 16 but he just made a BIG expensive mistake. The cops love to throw the book at a new driver.

I found great humor in the entire episode.

Cute little buggers. Not easy to find in the wild.

Arvo ladies and gents.

After a crappy end to the week we decided to go camping rather than mope around here. Camped with a bunch of mates. Talked a lot about last week as both were part of everyone's lives. It was a good thing. Back on the hamster wheel today - bloody lotto office keeps forgetting my phone number.

Welcome back from the boonies, Jeff.

G'day Jim, cheers.

We had a fun time. Only one bike accident in front of us (if you don't count the little burn I got from a hot exhaust while changing a wheel). The road (track) had turned to sheit in the time it took us to go the 200km down on Saturday and return yesterday because of all the traffic. After about 90km of heavy corrugations we banged out on a stock route that took us west to the bitumen. It added about 70k more to the trip but we could do it at a comfy 100kph instead of 60kph. The corrugations were so bad on the other track, my cb antenna on the bull bar self destructed.

I'll post up some photos when I get around to having a look at them. It's birthday week too this week (everyone except me) so it'll probably be next weekend before I get the free time to do that.

lunch time................no wait thats over................

back to it.

Well, they stuck a skin graft on my foot this morning. Said it was stem cells made from babies foreskin. I asked if my foot was going to get hard when I saw a pretty girl.

I think I follow what you're saying. Dirt roads like that aren't my favorite surface to drive on, either. Getting back on paved roads is better, even if it lengthens the trip a bit.