Andrew and Kathleen

The difference between Kathleen and I is that I shout at the TV during segments involving politics. Kathleen, meanwhile, shouts at the TV whenever there is a chance that Kylie Kwong will be asked to demonstrate typical Chinese cooking.

Note to self: when booking for corrective eye surgery, remember to read about how it actually feels. Owwwww!!

I've seen the promotional video from on eye clinic, and it looks more like a clip from A Clockwork Orange than anything else. Not sure how they expect people watching it to not change their minds, though.

For the non-opthomologically challenged, booking in laser eye surgery means weighing up the inconvenience of wearing glasses and/or contact lenses for the rest of our lives against having the eyelids wedged open with metal tongs while the lens of your eye is sliced open and the cornea burnt by a laser... WHILE YOU ARE STILL AWAKE!

Imagine being the first test patient!

Don't you hate it when you're at an internet cafe and the person before you has been checking out porn sites, and you can't clear the browser history, so the person after *you* thinks that *you're* the perv?

We finally own, or more accurately, have a financial stake in, a place. We bought a three-bedroom unit in Wollstonecraft. Looking here was a little bit of a late plan, after not finding anything in Artarmon, which was the suburb we spent most of our time investigating. Over a six month period, we looked at places in St Leonards, Chatswood, North Sydney, Cammeray, Artarmon, Wollstonecraft and, for good measure, Kingsford.

Whew.

The hunt scaled the heights of "We can never afford this in a million years" to "Are they serious? I wouldn't buy it with YOUR money!" We saw a place that housed six renting Korean students in a two bedroom apartment that hadn't been cleaned in years, a place that resembled a gaudy Asian hotel room, places that were inconvenient, places that were dark and dingy, places where babies lived, with all those baby smells. We saw it all. And quite frankly, we're glad to not be looking anymore.

We're about five minutes walk from Crows Nest, so even though we're not quite in the thick of the action in south central Sydney, at least we haven't retired to the boondocks. Nor are we giving in to the false economy of cheaper prices in the north west or south west, where commuting times in multiple hours are the norm.

And it's ours.

We (okay, it was Kathleen who did the hard negotiating yards) managed to bargain the owners down to a more realistic (and affordable!) level. This took place over a number of weeks, during which everyone seemed to live vicariously through us, offering all sorts of bargaining strategies and suggestions.

With us coming up bit by bit, and them coming down, we managed to get within shouting distance of the prices that each of us thought were reasonable.

Things, however, came to a head over a difference of $5,000. We weren't willing to budge upwards, and they weren't coming down. Fair enough. Goodbye, we said, and walked away.

Gee, did that hurt. By this stage, against all advice, we'd become attached to the place, despondant at the idea of having to pick up the house search again.

"Do you think we should just give them what they want?" we asked ourselves, before steeling our resolve. No! Homeowners have had it so good for so long! Someone needs to take a stand against their greed and irrationality! And that might as well be us! Besides, we were certain that, after seven weeks on the market and only a few half-hearted offers, that the vendor was keen to offload before the place became too stale to sell.

And luckily we held our ground. For that very night we received a call from the real estate agent, asking us to come back to the negotiating table. They'd agreed to drop their commission, breaking the deadlock. We had a deal!

Well, except for the builders' inspection report and the strata report, both of which came back prudently non-committal.

But that's another story.

The settlement is due mid-July, which means that from the middle of next month, we'll have a honking big mortgage, rather than paying rent. But it's OUR honking big mortgage.

Nothing emphasises the contrast between the temporal nature of renting vs. the permanence of buying like a 30-year timeframe, either. Assuming we pay the minimum each month, by the time we finally knock this thing over, I'll be 57.

Scary!!

Anyway, we've gone through about 3 bottles of champagne so far in various 'celebrate our indebture' happenings. We'll have to put a few on ice for the housewarming.

Between now and then, however, there's still a stack to do.

It's amazing how much crowing the Brits are doing now that their side is actually in with a hope of victory this Ashes series. At Kevin's place for dinner last night, John was making all sorts of rash statements, helped by the fact that Australia was getting knocked around by the English bowlers.

Luckily for him, he'll be out of Australia before the end of the series, so there'll be no chance to rub it in when our cricket team returns to their winning ways. Unluckily for us, both he and Holly are planning on spending the next few years there. Which will come first - our housewarming or their farewell?

By the time June had rolled around, both Kathleen and I had had it up to here with the city, and we had to get out. So at the last minute, I booked a place in Huskisson and we headed down to Jervis Bay for the long weekend.

Initially, we thought that our planned recharge would turn out to be a big bust - grey skies and rain made Saturday the first day in ages where we'd actually had poor weather, and then the battery in the car went flat on Saturday night.

But Saturday's grey skies made a beautiful setting to the cliffs at the national park, as we walked to the ruins of the lighthouse there.

We even watched these amazing sea eagles as one swooped down into the sea and returned with a flapping fish in its talons. By late afternoon, the weather looked like it was about to break.

By Sunday, the weather was back to perfect as we rose at dawn, and watched the sun rise over the bay. By Monday, I was swimming as the sun rose*:

On the beach, Kathleen elected to stay warm and dry:

By the time we made it back to Sydney (heading off early to beat the traffic), we were ready for the real world again!

* Actually, I was kind of glad Kathleen came down to take this photo, since I'd left the keys with her, as she slept blissfully under the warm doonas as I wandered down to the beach with only a towel. Her "Oh my God, are you crazy!?" from the shore 50 metres away kind of broke the serenity of the moment, but it was all good!

I honestly meant to write this a few days earlier, but after the long weekend and a few late nights at work, my ability to write a coherent sentence dropped to alarmingly low levels. Hence the delay.

In lieu of news (tonight I just want to go to bed and sleep for about twenty days!), I will post this picture instead:

You'll note the bit where it says "Under Contract/Under Offer". Guess who put the offer in?

More soon - I promise!

Every year, almost as regular as clockwork, it happens.

The monarchist letter writers put pen to paper and get their names in print in the papers, whingeing and wailing about how, if republicans don't like the queen so much, they should just forgo the Queen's Birthday long weekend.

The obvious riposte is, however, that we're not celebrating the Queen's Birthday.

We're celebrating Republic Day.

And to celebrate, we went away to Jervis Bay.

A long-neglected mate from the US drops a line from out of the blue, the Best Man has - finally - added the latest travel missives to his website

Life imitating art imitating life... Russell Crowe really is fightin' 'round the world.

If things have been quiet here over the past week or so, you'll have to forgive us. We've been busier than the proverbial one-legged ballerina. We've got some exciting, yet scary, news that we'll wait until after the weekend to announce.

Suffice to say, it's a bit of a life-changing moment for us right now...