Plangent quoins

Actually, this will just be a meandering diary of the last week, and I couldn't think of a snappy title.

Marcus won all five chess matches and finished on top of the ladder in the Spring Cup at school. He played against the computer here today on the toughest setting and completely flogged it. (I have a feeling the software is a little wonky though).

He is riding to school now very proficiently and confidently. I lumber after him, with my manly courier bag in my hand like a giant camo-pattern clutch purse.

On Thursday we had a visit from the Premier at work. He had been through to announce something once before, and this time he burbled on about us being his good friends. We are good PR for him - the government give us seed money and we use it to earn export dollars in the "knowledge economy". He brought a wide range of public servants with him. One of his major people is the sister of our next door neighbour Sharon - that's the size of Hobart right there.

We were not particularly asked to drop everything and mingle, so most of us kept plugging away at our work. A functionary in a beautiful dark suit picked up a box of breath mints off Dave's desk and popped out a couple, saying "Thanks mate" as he headed back over to the heavy hitters.

We lost at soccer last night. Cam copped a punch in the guts at one stage, and the culprit was sin-binned for about five minutes. This made it 4 v 3, and we should have been able to capitalise, but we didn't. When the guilty party was allowed back on, he went up to Cam, apologised and shook hands, and said he'd thought Cam was someone else. Nice excuse in a 4-a-side game!

Today I took Marcus to athletics which has been off for a few weeks due to the regular rain. He did very well, getting a couple of personal bests in a row. I sewed on his badges last night, and it was nice to see him looking like he belonged with all the right insignia.

This afternoon we spent in desirable West Hobart, visiting Nick and Anna and the girls, then Matt and Mem and the girls. Matt is just back from 2 weeks in New York and Washington. I was staggered to realise that is his first trip outside Australia, as he is such a knowledgeable, interesting and "been overseas" type guy. Mem has never been overseas, so I am taking up a collection starting RIGHT NOW to send her to New Zealand. Matt and Mem have two of my drawings AND a Patrick Grieve, so I am thinking of making some little amazon.com-style cards for my exhibition that say "people who bought this also bought..."

Nick's job every December is to take our family photo for the Christmas newsletter. Unfortunately Michael was in a strop, so we will be trying again tomorrow with the timer function taking the place of Nick.