My kind of weekend!

It’s been a great start of the school year, especially for Esther, who is now a fully independent high school kid! She seems to know all the bus routes and has gathered all sorts of relevant intelligence pertaining to her new life in no time at all…
Patrick is about to change jobs, it was a serendipity type of situation and he grabbed it – we will not know whether it really is a good move until he moves, but a change was sort of waiting to happen and this came along and he grabbed it! (What seemed to have persuaded him was that it is a ‘nice ride along the river to Paramatta’, let me translate to you without the local knowledge: it’s 1 1/2 hours by bicycle – and Patrick simply likes to stay fit!).
I have slipped into my new role as TAFE teacher, academic and event manager fairly seamlessly… so I am co- authoring a paper on consent in context of innovative surgery (job 1), organise the 2015 AAP conference in July (5 days and 12 streams, FYI a that means 12 philosophers talking simultaneously, but THANK GOD in different rooms!) (job 2) and teaching textiles (JOB 3).

Despite having taken heaps of reading home on Friday for job 1, I barely got any done. UHhh quelle surprise… I enjoyed plenty of culture this weekend… It all started with watching ‘Still Alice‘ on Friday with a bunch of girlfriends and afterwards enjoying a hot Thai meal, washed down with a fair amount of cold beer.

Then yesterday we went to the museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay (enjoying the classic Sydney vista!) to check out the Chuck Close exhibition. It was really wonderful!

In the evening Patrick and I went to the Theater, we saw Radiance at the Belvoir. Moving, beautiful, authentic… A story about the unraveling of ‘the given, the assumed’, a tragic revelation of the real. We happened to sit in the front row and saw every tear, flinch, emotion of the 3 actresses (FYI a Leah Purcell was one of them, one of the most celebrated Aboriginal actresses of our time).

Today… well… action man had to cycle many km at Akuna Bay before sunrise (nah, was probably later, but just felt like it…) with fellow action man Craig, whilst I walked puppies in the wild and then had lot’s of coffee and (ripped and re-) knitted amazing poncho.

When middle child awoke (and I thus gained access to textileshed) I made lot’s of relevant samples for job 3.

How to insert a zipper into a bag (I tried to illustrate 3 stages).

How to make a classic pocket (again, 3 relevant stages).

Some embellishment with bias and straight (home made) tape.

Explaining bias and straight grain.

Inverted and (what’s the word… ) other type of non-straight edges and how to treat them.

Different types of seams a and two types of binding.

When I got too hot (hours later…), I then dipped into the cool water of our pool and felt like a Hollywood movie star :).

After lunch, I also gave both dogs haircuts, which took forever, but seems to have knocked ‘years off them’. Just compare the old and the new hair style on Jasper…

Before….

… and after…

It’s just because of the tics around here… they can kill dogs. So with short hair we can spot them easier, but they are less likely to stick in the first place…

Fortunately, we also managed to visit David, which was very good… and Jasper did show off his new haircut!

And (YIKES….) I have got an iPad!!!! Patrick just got me one… So I think I am now truly in the 21st century… I am a bit technologically challenged, so it’s a learning curve… But that’s ok… I am looking forward to taking so many more photos! I also downloaded a yoga app… Uhhh…. So exiting!!!

So – somehow it’s after 8pm and we had to recruit some children to cook some veg and bbq some meat… where has the time gone??? Hope you had a good weekend, I feel well rested and energized for the next week.