Up the Road One Last Time

On Saturday we turned up for Stefan and Iris's party. Which was great, except that the party was scheduled for Sunday. They took advantage of our fuckwittedness to take a break from their chores, and we had a good chinwag and catch-up over tea and biscuits. Who says I'm getting old?
There was an eight-foot-long snake above our breakfast spot on the balcony outside our lounge on Sunday morning. It looked like a carpet snake to me. I hope it was a carpet snake anyway. It was friendly and relaxed, and seemed to be looking for somewhere to bask. It slithered off and lay on the roof for a bit, and when I went back to check a couple of hours later, it was gone. We packed the car for the last ever Brissie commute, and then hit Stefan and Iris's party on the way. Their dutch-themed Easter-egg hunt, beer, and superlative spicy apple cake parties are definitely a fixture in my calendar. I had a couple of beers and caught up with people I hadn't seen since the last one, so poor C was designated driver as far as Murwillumbah. The post-easter traffic was fairly light to my relief, and we were back in West End by seven thirty, which is a good start to the week.
Knowing this is our last week in Brissie for a while, we've been frantically doing things that are easier and/or cheaper in the city than in the bush: We took the car to the garage to get a towbar (and discovered a rather excellent cafe on Logan Road while we waited); we've put the food safe which we bought two weeks ago into one of those "dip'n'strip" places in the Gabba, but the guy's still battling the (probably lead-based) 1940s Tasmanian paint a week later; we've got Kaara's photo for her australian passport; we've showed our faces at the annual ITG contractors' shindig at The Fox in West End (and fluked a friend's babysitter for the night so we could actually go together!); and, we've rung round most of Northern Rivers' insect exterminators - and the termites' days are now numbered - I've booked a pest guy to come at the end of next week and use the powdered arsenic and maybe more long-term chemical solutions as well. No more Mister nice householder.
Mostly, though, I've been finishing off at one job while ramping up at the other, and helping C stay on top of the nappies and the entertainment of an increasingly easily-bored little girl.
A final piece of frantic background activity: This cookie-cutter template was chosen back in 2006 in a desperate attempt to avoid choice of (and tweaking of) a template from becoming a displacement activity as I tried to shirk the weekly blogging. A new (and less playschool) template is on the way. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of this blog.