Not a good week

I got a cold from my mother-in-law via my son, which has now turned into a secondary infection as per usual, and conjunctivitis also from my son and husband plus other ailments I can't mention. Oh joy!

My laptop was pronounced dead by the local PC repair place. They offered me a newish IBM Lenovo for $1300 but I may as well hang out for one bought pre-tax from Dell. Probably be better than the old for half the price.

On the bright side, Ryan continues to entertain although he's been a bit picky about food lately (maybe contagious too). Keeps hanging out for jelly.

Ryan hard at work at Zoe's house

HPIM1628
Originally uploaded by Robubble

We all went to the Powerhouse Museum on Saturday. Ryan was entertained for some hours and fell asleep on the tram back to the car. He was very excited by the space display.

Computer trouble

My laptop has died of heat stroke. I bought it prior to the French sojourn (1e its 4 years old). Luckily I was able to extract the data off the HDD to our PC with a handy adapter from Jaycar. Don't know if I can be bothered paying heaps to fix it.

In other non-news, no action from our strata insurance company or the builder on fixing our roof or deck. It's been five weeks. Dad and I disassembled the deck timber so we can actually walk across but now Ryan can just run out into the reserve or the road ;(
Thinking of having the other trees removed at extrordinary expense. It's a shame as they were one of the reasons we bought the house. Ironic that our duplex neighbours hate trees.

Ryan had a little bit of conjunctivitis so at the doctor's we got something for the scratched spots too. Hoepfully this will work or he'll end up with big scars on his face 10 years before puberty.

Fallen tree

HPIM1596 Fallen tree
Originally uploaded by Robubble

This Southern blue-gum came down at 1.30am on Saturday morning.

HPIM1596

Stump cross-section

HPIM1603 Stump
Originally uploaded by Robubble

HPIM1603

Tree death

I'm sitting here typing to the oh-so-restful sounds of chainsaws. It has been going on for the past three hours. At 1 am yesterday morning I was in bed trying to sleep despite the noise of the storm and the full force of a cold. The groaning and cracking noises coming from the large eucalyptus tree at the side of the house were alarming enough for me to go outside and shine a torch at it. It was then leaning hard against the very corner of the roof and cracking the eaves. I rang my parents (Mum had arrived from the UK in the evening so she was still awake with jetlag). A couple of minutes after I started talking, rather ineloquently as I was a bit scared, the tree came down. Mum could hear the bang over the phone and me saying "f***". It wasn't so scary once it had fallen. It took out half of our deck roof (the part that Dad had worked so hard to repair and cover!). The bulk of it landed in the council reserve. The insurance company sent a tree lopper to have a look and later yesterday he rang the neighbours to say he would come today (Sunday).