Steve. Chanin. Phil.

Current staff status: SOBER.

This is Pat (aka 'Office Clown'). Bloody good value to have around!

...but in about 5hrs he'll be well on his way.

This is in the little store room where we stash the 'good' stuff. Like, um.... an old microfiche reader; Christmas decorations; broken PCs; and ALCOHOL.

Tonight is "pool, table tennis, drinks and dinner night" (one of the benefits of having both a snooker and table tennis table at work) and the drinks menu includes a couple of Chardonnays; a couple of sparking whites; four different sorts of beer; and assorted pre-mixed 'girly' drinks.

Should be fun.

PS - Scott - you look like a complete GUMBY in this photo, mate ;-p

This is Beau. He turned nine this week and, due to a mix-up between relos, has ended up with two birthday cakes to extinguish candles on. No complaints from him, of course, he's quite a fan of chocolate cake.

[Edited 16Feb05 due to some significant factual errors. See Marty's comments below. Thanks, mate.]

About 30 years ago, the Barry clan had a dream of building an absolute-waterfront dream house on the shores of Lake Macquarie. The bought a block of land with an old house on it - rented it out - and build a small "temporary" house at the top of the block. They lived in that temporary house for almost 30 years!

[insert tale of woe]

About 7-8 years ago they finally knocked down the ye olde waterfront property and started work on the new place. Unfortunately, following ongoing delays and problems during construction, the builder went belly-up with massive debts and their house was left very much incomplete.

So, they had to turn to their builder's insurance policy to get the job finished. More problems. The builder's insurer, Royal Sun, then wanted to play games and make life difficult for them.

Left high and dry, a battle with numerous legal and customer service representatives followed.

After running a successful case through the NSW Department of Fair Trading, they could FINALLY get the job finished and new builders were engaged to complete the work. Of course, much of the work by the original builder was sub-standard and had to be ripped down. Same, too, materials that had been damaged because the house was incomplete and had been exposed to 2-3 years of weather.

But - the wait was worth it (IMHO!). The house is fantastic and the views sublime. It is almost surreal hanging out with Marty on the back deck after all these years of following their dramas.

Back at Alison's place, which is just a couple of minutes drive away from the Kam Ho. Thee 'braised chicken with cashews 'and 'combination chow mein' smell *so* good right now! Will be great, as always, to just just sit down and catch up what's been happening around my old home town.

The hottest news at the moment is the reports of semi-frozen, headless CHICKENS smashing through peoples' tile roofs in the western suburbs. I can't believe all of the crap they're coming up with to try to explain it. So far,
everything from "they're falling from light aircraft" through to "large crows are picking them up from the local rubbish dump and dropping them" have been put forward.

WAKE UP NEWCASTLE! Someone has built a pipe cannon (plumber's pipe + endcap + gas bottle + fuse) and is blastin frozen chickens hundreds of metres into the air.

This is Pete. Pete's one of the most technologically-ignorant people I know. but, but he does like the IBM e-Business polo shirt someone (a certain IBM employee and relative) gave him!

My sister loves entertaining and seems to enjoy going into the mad rush of preparing, cooking and generally fussing about. Their new unit in Neutral Bay has a nice kitchen which overlooks their courtyard/BBQ area (snapped this through the window).

Just arrived at sister and brother-in-law's place. The folks have travelled down from Newcastle as well, so we're all getting together for dinner. Stepped out the back to find the BBQ has been kicked off - Peter at the tongs. Big beef and lamb steaks, onions, mushrooms.... Hmmm... BBQ smell.....