Birthday season

Once again I am sorry for not having updated this blog in a couple of months. The last thing I wrote about was the marathon walk that Raewyn and I did. We've both recovered; in fact we even went for a walk last Saturday up to Boulder Hill (Belmont Regional Park), training for Queen Charlotte / Milford track / the next marathon walk... I think she's hooked now :) Anyway it was a gorgeous day to be out and about.

September is birthday month for our family. It was Mum's 60th on the 25th, and Al's 29th on the 30th. So we had a surprise in store for Mum a couple of weeks ago - dinner at a restaurant in town, followed by cake and presents and games at my house. We invited Uncle Derek and co as well and it was a really enjoyable evening (although I think Mum was a little worried at times about what we had planned next!).

August and September were pretty slow and steady work-wise; no trips away, which is good for actually settling in and getting things done. There are a number of papers which I've started working on and not finished, so now is the time to make some progress on those. The first half of October is the same; after Labour Day (22 Oct) I have a trip to Melbourne for 24 hrs of experiments, then in November I'm off for a conference circuit of Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide for 3 weeks.

About two weeks ago we had badminton club champs. My first game was the open ladies' singles final. It went to three sets and was probably one of the best singles games I've played in. Eventually I lost (20-22, 21-9, 15-21), or you could look at it as coming runner-up and winning the plate! My second game was the open ladies' doubles final, where I was teamed up with the girl I played against in the singles. We won that one reasonably easily. After that it was open mixed doubles, where there were four pairings and again my partner and I came runners-up.