Monday, September 05, 2011

No, there's nothing new around here. Surgery is still scheduled for Oct. 17 and I think I might make this one. The wound is looking a lot better and is small so I have hopes it will heal by then.

Swans news: we made into the finals and will play St Kilda in Melbourne Saturday night. It is an elimination final and, while in theory they could win, I am expecting an early exit. I am pleased they did as well as this given the number of new players. It proves we can bring up new talent and win without Roos. Our first Irish import Tadgh has announced his retirement. I've watched his entire career and it's been a great one. I have to admit there are names in the records list I don't know, because I don't watch the matches because I get overly excited. This can be dangerous for someone in my condition.

My great news is that I've hired a gardener. Actually I am paying a foreign student from the ANU to work in my garden doing what I can't. He worked most of the weekend and not only got my peas and greens (lettuce, spinach, swiss chard) planted, but he completely remodeled my overgrown pear tree, bring it back to reasonable size. He has an orchard of 300 fruit trees at home so I trusted him to know what to do and he did exactly what I wanted. He also cleaned out the ivy and vinca underneath it and cleaned out the vinca smothering my hellebores under the wisteria. He will be back next week to continue the cleaning out of the veggie beds. He thought it was safe to plant the hot season crops like pumpkin, but we're still having frosts and it isn't safe for another month or two. He's also said he will clean out my fish pond and get it running which is something I have never gotten my lawn mowing person to do. My plum tree is in full bloom and I have narcissus in bloom. Unfortunately the last people to weed my garden eliminated some of the daffodils planted in the herb bed.

I have made a little progress in my genealogy, getting death certificates for my father's parents. I was hoping to find where my grandfather was born but all I got was "New York". I think it's Albany but New York didn't begin registering births until 6 years after my grandfather was born, so I'm out of luck there. I will have to rely on census data unless the city of Albany has records. I'm adding siblings where I can, hoping to make more connections.

I have had my adoration of Stephen Fry rekindled by watching his live performance in Sydney on cable. There are heaps of video clips on YouTube of hysterical sketches with Hugh Laurie and I've put the DVDs of their BBC shows up on my queue on Quickflix. I need a dose of silliness until there's more Big Bang Theory to watch.

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