Australia Week 4-3/4

Much to report during the last 10 days or so.

Let's start with Murphy who thankfully seems to have recovered well from those hot hot days last week.  She has a new neighbour, some kind of mastiff-cross whom I have named "She-who-needs-to-take-a-chill-pill".

"She-who-needs-to-take-a-chill-pill" and Murphy's neighbour on her other side "Boo-from-Revelstoke" (only people familiar with the Royal Canadian Air Farce and Mike-from-Canmore will get this reference), spent the day barking madly at one another across her kennel; each one setting the other off time and again.  Poor geriatric Murphy looked at me with a martyred expression as if to say "those younguns have been doing that for days now, can you please make them stop!"  She's ready to come home and I am more than ready to welcome her.

Eight more days...

Next, we happily received our sea shipment which finally cleared inspection and quarantine.  I remember clearly C2 commenting as we were preparing to leave Geneva:

"We have next to nothing to ship...what do we have?  A couple of beds, a dining room set and some living room furniture".  I laughed at his righteous certainty.

 Remember that six years ago, we left a 3000 square foot house in Calgary for a 2000 square foot house in Geneva and have now taken occupancy of a roughly 1500 square foot house in Melbourne.  You do the math.  Day 3 post-shipment and our house still look like a hurricane hit it.   Hope to make more progress this weekend before C2 leaves for a 3 week sojourn to Western Australia.

One interesting tidbit to setting up the new house...now don't get grossed out people.  In Geneva, we never had our lovely carpets professionally cleaned as the average cost was in excess of 300 CHF per item.  My succession of crappy vacuums also left much to be desired.  So imagine 5 years of dogs and cats, less than stellar though frequent vacuuuming, and 8 weeks stored in an airtight container.  Suffice it to say that the perfume of wet dog and musty dust isn't entirely masked by mandarine-cranberry candles.

On the J front, things are much improved.   Nascent friendships are budding and the school appears to have taken my complaints seriously and have addressed the bullying issue thus far to my satisfaction.  I am increasingly impressed with the school; with their celebration of multiculturalism and multilinguism as well as their progressive pedagogy.

With respect to our social life, last Sunday, we drove to Portsea, a tiny seaside town sandwiched between the calm and passive "front" bay beaches of Port Philip Bay, and the wild rip-filled 25 foot wave crashing "back" or open sea beaches.  We spent the day with Kellie and her family.  Jack and I ran up giant sand dunes at the back beach and got knocked off our feet by a powerful incoming wave while standing watching them.  Much fun was had.  I think I have found a kindred champagne drinker to boot!

This evening, we had drinks with our charming neighbours, Michael and Ann, native Melbournites who welcomed us into their home for a lovely couple of hours of gin and tonics, and conversation.

All in all, a pretty good report I'd say.  Stay tuned...