Surprise!

Another entry, bet you weren't expecting that. The thing is, I've tidied my room, organized my desk, done all of my other menial chores so this is my last ditch attempt at finding something to do other than settling down to another day of work, and this didn't exactly win hands down either.

I am all alone in the house at the moment as Andy, Simone and Lucas are back in Europe for the next few weeks and Karen has been back home to Canada, although actually she arrives back today. Still for now it is just me, the builders, the dogs and the kittens at the house. There was some discussion before Andy and Simone left about how many, and which ones we should keep, I don't mean of the builders and dogs, but the kittens. Well, as it happens, after spending this time alone with them I already have them listed in order of preference, not so much for which should stay, but which should go first. Now I do realize that the mother is going to be harder to re-house than the rest, but I don't feel that that should be any reason to stop us trying, and anyway, with all the building work going on downstairs there are plenty of hessian sacks and concrete blocks around, and the Belize river does flow past the bottom of the garden. We have options is all I'm saying.

Everything over here is going good. There was a small concern a few weeks ago as Belize was, and possibly still is I guess, going through a small period of political unrest due to a very corrupt government. It was all relatively peaceful and uneventful however and luckily, anywhere fighting did break out there always seemed to be a policeman just a stones throw away.

One of the things I will have to do when Karen gets back, is to get her to drive me to Belize city so as I can pick up my truck from the garage it's in and move it to yet another garage so it can sit and fester there for a while as I sit at home eating hundred dollar bills and marveling over what a sound investment I made. I am looking forward to driving it again however as the current garage has done absolutely nothing to fix it and just getting it there in the first place was a real experience. The thrill of the open road, the wind in my hair, the faulty steering box and the absolute abject fear that comes from driving a car with no brakes. You've got to love it. That coupled with the fact it is still making an extremely loud high pitch whining sound when you get it up to any sort of speed (something done less often in the current predicament). It's so loud you can't even here yourself screaming over the top of it, and I know this cause I tried. Very liberating, but I can't help but feel any passerby may have thought me rather odd. There is in any case some small consolation to all this in that it has at least for the moment, given up on spontaneously igniting the dashboard at inopportune moments. This can only be a good thing yet I still do, every time I catch a whiff of a passing bushfire, find myself having to check that the fire is on the outside not in. I've been thinking that, rather than paying for the next mechanics bill, I might just spend the money on yellow paint and an angel grinder, if I take the back off Andy's jeep, a quick lick of paint and he might never realize it's missing.

Anyway, I think that's enough for this annual report so I'm off. I have only one photo this time as Karen was selfish enough to take her own digital camera home with her when she left but at least you can see from this that I am still alive, and as you always knew, a 'winner'. Unfortunately Andy had to miss the final as he left the day before to go to England but I picked up his top scorer trophy for him. Something I felt slightly fraudulent doing due to my inability to net one myself throughout the entire tournament.

Hope you are all well, don't hold your breath for the next installment.