Torrential Rain

This week I've become addicted to blogger play. It's like the web used to be in the 90s - a stream of pointless human creativity. It also reminds me that not everywhere in the world is having as much rain as Nimbin right now.
Sadly, we seem to be in a phase of endless work rather than pointless creativity.
We drove down on Wednesday arvo for our first ante-natal class. It's definitely unnatural for blokes to take such a close interest in the process of pregnancy and birth, but I'm gonna decry the "is=ought" tendency on this one - it might not be natural, but, as usual, more knowledge leads to better awareness, communication, and sympathy - so it's all good. Besides, I never knew that a pregnant woman's heart almost doubles in size, and rotates through almost 90 degrees to fit in the remaining space as the ribcage is lifted. So I consider myself of educated.
Late on Wednesday night there was a fairly strong wind, and a 20 foot bottlebrush tree in our garden snapped at the base of the trunk, and crashed across our fence into the neighbour's garden. We got some thick rope from the hardware store in Nimbin, and used the car to pull the tree back upright, so we could saw it up without destroying what was left of the fence or trampling the neighbours' plants.
On Friday I checked the mail, and there was a card saying I'd missed a package I needed to sign for. We defected from our usual midweek Rainbow-Cafe table, and got coffee at the e-bar instead so we could pop across the road and pick up the parcel while waiting for our flat whites. The package was from Alex in Wisconsin, and consisted of a party-pack of his dad's Pentax lenses, including a fantastic zoom that makes the Nimbin Rocks look about a kilometre away from our front door! These will be put to good use shortly, and many pictures of the Tweed valley and Nimbin surrounds will result - but first of all I must get a tripod to go with the zoom lense - my first attempts to shoot distant scenery without a tripod have made me realise I should cut down on caffeine!
On Saturday evening, we were invited to a party at Steffan and Iris's place - to celebrate Iris's 30th birthday. Once again, they had arranged a slap up feed, and several musicians from the village provided the entertainment, including Mark the local GP, who plays a mean bassline. It rained torrentialy, tropically, and non-stop, which meant that the barbecue area which Stefan have prepared by the creek was a non starter, but in a way that made the proceedings more fun as everyone had to crowd indoors for the food and the music. After about 5 hours C got tired and I ran her home, but after returning to the fray, I was too knackered to continue myself after one more hour - and one more stubby of VB - and ended up heading home to bed at about 10.30!
I've had two small changes to my working environment that make it more social recently - first, five or six of my friends simultaneously got themselves on Skype, which has been great, and now C's desk is set up in our office space, it is quite companionable when we both have work to do - with the door open, the music playing, and a pot of tea to share, it hardly feels like working at all - which is, I guess, how it should be.