Andrew and Kathleen

Whoo hoo! Got in ahead of the deadline for lodging my tax return with H&R Block yesterday. Just like last year, I got a couple of grand back, too - $2,600 to be precise.

I've always had a tax refund, every year, without fail. Partly because in years past my employers have taken money out for my HECS debt, even though that got paid off years ago. I just never got around to letting work know. Hey, I get it back so it's no great problem.

This year I had pretty sporadic work, but when I got it, I got paid pretty well. So I got taxed on each pay cheque as though I was earning twice the money.

A nice little earner for the wedding, anyway!

Eva sent us an amazingly funny Japanese ad for a Japanese green tea drink.

Hilarious stuff!

I wish I had a kid I could dress up in one of these scary Halloween costumes for Kris' Halloween party tomorrow night.

Scary! Almost as scary as...

... signing up for health insurance, which is the surest sign yet of Settling Down. Freaky! Medibank will gladly take around $70 of our hard-earned each and every month, with us hoping that they will stump up for something in return.

In other news, I have given up fighting The Man. It's hard to rage against the machine when you have private health insurance.

Yoshinoya just opened up a restaurant in Oxford St! It's not a patch on the best fast food restaurant in the world, Matsuya, but any gyudon restaurant is better than none!

It was good, but... it just didn't feel right. Not authentic enough, maybe. The English menu and English-speaking staff didn't help, either. I loved going to Matsuya because you could just walk in, pull up a seat at the counter, hand over a ticket, get your meal, eat and leave - all without needing to speak. Plus the decor and fellow patrons meant that you knew that 'upmarket' was not where the restaurant was headed.

The Oxford St Yoshinoya felt a little like a Starbucks or something - trendy little photos on the wall (of gyudon, for crying out loud! It's not bloody coffee!), dark red walls contrasting with white tables, bright lights... give it a few years without a clean, and maybe it will start feeling comfortable enough.

No, not ours!

The Register is reporting about a bloke in Scotland selling his wedding invite on Ebay.

A whole bunch of late nights at work over the last two weeks (plus I went in yesterday) means that actually getting around to writing something interesting at the end of the day becomes increasingly unlikely. Luckily, my employer has a pretty enlightened view of overtime in comparison to the rest of the IT industry (i.e. I actually get paid for it). So the missing time sucks, but at least I get compensated for it.

Kathleen's cousin Elaine moved into her new place yesterday. Funnily enough, it's just down the road in Campbell St. So that makes both Dickson and Kathleen and now cousin Elaine, all living in the same suburb in Sydney. It makes it easier for when everyone gets together for dinner!

It's Kathleen's birthday on Thursday!

Warmest October day on record. 38 unbelievable frigging degrees.

The only positive was that the power went out in our building at work, taking the network with it. No network means no files. No files means no work. I left work at 4.

Seen in Redfern:

"If you voted Liberal...
I will hunt you down...
and KILL YOU
I don't know where you live but I'm very good at research

My old flatmate, and Kathleen's bridesmaid, G-Ha, needs your vote!

Her sketch, Oompa Loompa Son, is battling it out online for a spot on Shoot The Writers, a British sketch comedy show. Vote now!

Two steps forward, two steps back at the moment. As software testers, we've found some great problems over the last two weeks, stuff that would have killed the client had the software gone live. Unfortunately, it adds an iterative cycle in - we need to wait for the fix and then retest.

And if the process repeats itself, as it has done, the target gets further and further away.

Add in to that problems with other teams wanting to 'borrow' our servers, sporadic downtime and other problems and our nice, comfortable (but still aggressive) project plan starts to look a lot more ominous.

Two sleeps to go! Here's my election plan:

Saturday

Buy copies of the SMH, the Australian, the Daily Tele (yes, I know) and read it ALL. Should take me through until mid-afternoon.

Saturday mid-afternoon

Saturday night

Election coverage on ABC and Channel Nine.

Sunday

Buy copies of the Sun-Herald, the Sunday Age, the Sunday Telegraph (yes, I *know*) and read it ALL. Especially if Howard loses.

What a relaxing weekend! We only had one wedding-related appointment, on Saturday morning, so the rest of the weekend was spent lazing around doing not very much at all.

Got back in to Sydney Sunday night, and went straight to Sushi Suma. You've got to love living in a city where it only takes an hour to go from getting off a plane to finishing dinner at a good restaurant.

The next trip to Hobart will be for the wedding!

Kathleen's cousin arrived in Sydney Sunday morning from Hong Kong. She's doing a bridging diploma at UTS over the summer to hopefully get into the second year of a bachelor's degree next year. She's staying with us until she finds a place of her own.

"Send me an email over the weekend, before you arrive," Kathleen told her last week. "Let us know when your flight gets in." Unfortunately, Kathleen's work email was inaccessible over the weekend. And that was where Elaine sent the flight details.

So on Sunday night, we hadn't heard from her.

Monday morning, a public holiday, and we're sleeping in. The phone rings.

And we're too lazy and tired to get up to answer it.

"If it's important, they'll call back."

They called back 10 minutes later.

And it's Elaine.

Whoops.

She did eventually get to our place, catching a cab.

Which is where the second surprise of the morning showed itself.

I meet her at the front door, giving her a hand carrying her luggage up.

I open the boot.

Have you ever seen those movie clips of the clown car, where a little Volkswagon just keeps spewing out clowns? Clown after clown and you wonder how the hell they managed to fit, before you realise the stop-start camera.

Inside the boot was case after case after case. 77kg in all.

77 kilograms.

I remember the whingeing and moaning that Qantas did when I tried to get 47kg on once. Lord knows how Elaine managed to get 77kg past them.

Anyway, after I paid the sherpas who were kind enough to cart the luggage up, we rearranged some furniture and set up the spare room to be a bedroom. And somehow managed to make everything fit.