Braces

I am officially the laziest blogger on the planet. Or more to the point I don't have writer's block, I have a whole box of writer's blocks. Anyway a follow up to a previous post has inspired me to type.

Finally got to the Orthodontist on Monday to hear the bad news. Braces $5400 with a 5% discount if paid up front. An additional $800 for a braces wire that we are assured will shorten the time needed with braces on by about 9 months. 10 months after the braces go on, she will have to have jaw surgery to lengthen her lower jaw. Now all this was pretty much as expected - overall costs were supposed to be about $3k after the health fund money came back.

Imagine my joy when not only did I get this rude woman who kept saying over and over "there's a 12 month waiting list" (we have been in the fund for 15 years so that was meaningless), and that they had discarded their annual limit builds up if not used policy. Then she informed me that the total annual rebate for Orthodontics was only $750.00 per annum. Sigh. The good news is that the Orthodontist will bill us over 4 different financial years, so it will eventually cost $3k, but only after July 2013.

Bottom line is we will borrow $5000 from the in-laws (bless 'em) and pay them back at $200 per fortnight for about a year, which coincidentally is only a little bit more than I am paying for supposed top cover from this health fund...

Whinge over....

There's worse things than bad teeth

Now I've always had dodgy teeth. A life of grinding an overbite has left me with a plethora of dental work and several teeth that are now ceramic and gold rather than enamel. But at least this just causes regular dental bills.

Took my daughter to her first adult dental appointment today. No cavities, no crowding and her teeth are being looked after quite well.....Oh and a bloody great overbite....

Braces....Children plus overbite equals poverty.

The mathematics of Orthodontics.

Public Holidays

I am amazed to see that there is a significant amount of discussion regarding the fact that in 2011 the Easter Monday holiday and Anzac Day fall on the same Monday. For the non-Anzac of you reading, ANZAC day is the day we remember our war veterans here in Australia.

I was watching a morning show today and two of the presenters stated that the Anzac Day holiday should not be moved to the Tuesday; that we should lose that day completely. Now our wages are set knowing how many public holidays there are and how many days off we get a year so the net result of this would be to add an extra working day to the year for zero extra recompense. Every time Anzac or Australia Day fall on a weekend, we get the strident calls from business hoping to get something extrra for nothing.

Therefore I propose that in 2012; as Anzac Day lands on a Tuesday, and there's really little point in us all wobbling into work for one day, the Monday should be added as an extra day off - call it "can't be arsed day". Lets see if business gives us a thumbs up for that one. After all its in the same vein as their idea...

Slacker

Sorry guys. I've been really slack about this blogging lark. I haven't really decided what I want this blog to be. I've considered history posts, family posts, political posts and humorous (well hopefully) posts, but so far it has all come to naught. I know people don't want to read about me beetling along about my health and the weather so what to do?

Introduce myself perhaps?

I was born here in Adelaide in 1965 at Calvary Hospital (back when they still had nuns for nurses) to an Estonian mother and English father who were both migrants. We moved to Darwin in 1971, to Alice Springs in 72 and back to Darwin again in 1974. For some reason for a short time, I became a bit of a harbinger of doom. In December Darwin was flattened by a cyclone. In 1975 we went on holidays to East Timor which was promptly invaded by Indonesia. I decided I had better not visit Yugoslavia any time soon.

I completed my education in Darwin, but as there were no tertiary institutions in the Northern Territory at that time, had to come to Adelaide to study. After two quite surreal years at the South Australian Institute of Technology, I became a drop-out and my father (who was apparently quite furious with me) told me that I should find a job in Adelaide.

Got a job in 1985 with the same company I work for now which pretty much makes me a relic of a bygone era. Shortly before I got my current job, I was offered and eventually after much soul searching, turned down a job with a security company as a clerk. My reasons for turning it down? They wanted me to guarantee to stay for a year and that seemed such a long time. 25 years on, I laugh at myself an my immaturity.

After 9 years of pretty much drifting along, I met my wife S who caught me rather than the other way round. She moved in and I discovered love (much to my surprise). We bought our first house in 1995 (for a massive $89k) and were married in July of that year. My daughter T came along in 1997, son L in 2000 and in 2001 we moved again. I sweated bullets at the time as it cost $160k which was $40k over what I'd intended to spend on a new house. Again I laugh as it would cost three times that to buy today. They're wheeling me out of this place when I'm on the way to my nursing home.

Anyway enough of my banality for now. Hopefully I'll think of something better to talk about soon.

Grandpa

Born in Estonia in 1917; the son of a fisherman and his wife (who defies classification in any other form than Jack of every other trade bar shipbuilding and fishing) on the banks of the Vortsjarv; Estonia's 3rd largest lake.

He defied his simple birth to complete his education, go to University and during his military service, rose to be a lieutenant in the Engineers of the Estonian Army. In 1939 he met my grandmother Helgi;the same year the Russians invaded. The whole of his unit was put on a train for Russia; but he escaped when they stopped for a comfort stop and hid out in the forests and rural farming areas for the next couple of years

On 22 July 1941, shortly after the start of the German invasion of Russia, he was married to Helgi and was then able to return to his home once the Russians left. Over the next three years he held a job first as a detective in the police force and later second in charge of the Civil Air Defence for Tallinn (the capital). In June 1942, my mother was born in Tallin, but soon she and my grandmother had to be sent to live with grandpa's parents to escape Russian air raids.

In 1944, with the Wehrmacht being pushed back by the Red Army, they left Estonia as refugees and managed to lie their way to Bavaria. Grandpa reasoned that this was where the Americans were and so was the best place in Germany to be when it became occupied. He barely managed to avoid being conscripted to fight for the Germans, and then barely missed out being sent back to Russia as a supposedly displaced Russian.

Having survived the war, they spent the next 4 years in a Canadian camp in northern Germany. Finally they were able to get visas to come to Australia and they landed in Sydney in late 1949. Only the men were promised jobs (generally useless time wasting and inneffective), and so Grandpa ended up digging holes in Townsville. Not content with this, he found himself his own job and worked in a factory for some time before deciding to move to South Australia where most of the Estonian migrants had ended up.

He joined the PMG as a trainee techniscian and rose up the ranks to manage a technical area. I came along in 1965 and after we moved to the Northern Territory I would be sent down to visit my grandparents during the Christmas school holidays. His relentless energy, walking, camping, swimming and extremely robust arguing (this is almost an Estonian pasttime) would keep me entertained. Although fairly stern, he had an wicked sense of humour when he wanted.

After he retired, he slowed down and settled into a fairly regular life until my Grandmother died in 2006. After that he went downhill. I won't dwell, but they were one person and without her he was fairly lost. On the ANZAC day Monday, we got news that his kidneys had failed. We visited him that night but although he reacted to voices, he didn't really know us. He passed that night.

Vale Grandpa. I know you and Grandma are back together wherever that may be.

I miss you both.

Hello? Is there anybody out there?

I was wondering if anyone was actually reading my little musings. I'm aware of one person that does (thanks Ute), but not of anyone else. I tried to add a counter to the blog (epic fail - long story), but I don't really know. Am I just typing away to myself (seems a little deluded and narcissistic all at once), or is anyone else looking in?

Yes I know this is a blatant play for comments but I need to know...

In an entirely sane way....trust me....really...

Oh and I really like leaving dots at the end of sentences...

False economy

Where I work, they have pretensions of being green. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that they (at least) are fooling themselves.

About 12 months ago, something disappeared from the troughs of the urinals in our building. I know you're thinking the little yellow hockey puck things that stop it smelling like well a urinal. And you'd be partially right too. They changed to blue cubes. What disappeared was water, which means that pure....um you know was flowing into the sump and generally making things delightful. The place smells bad now and the amount of water saving is probably offset by the lack of hygiene...

The second thing they do is turn off the air conditioning every night. This is undoubtably good for the environment, but not so good for the hamsters that still have to work given we are a 24 hour centre.

The third thing that they did was a classic in dubious benefit history. They mandated that we should all go to company screensavers on our computers. This was apparently going to save 300 tons of greenhouse gases a year...

Not to be critical or anything, but I figure that these massive green efforts are probably offset by another directive which says that we must leave our computers turned on 24/7 in case they want to direct an update to the computers after hours. This has the added benefit that when the day staff clock on in the mornings after the air conditioning has been off all night, it then takes 6-7 hours for the air conditioners to drag the temperature back to normal.

Rant over. Catch you later.

Right,

The funeral is done and as far as these things can be, it was a really nice ceremony. Everybody's speech was nice and it was more like a celebration. The kids helped to lighten it up too.

For those without a scorecard I have a daughter 13 - call her T, son 10 - L, and my brother-inlaw has a boy O who is 6 and a girl E who is 2 (going on 30). It was my grandfather's funeral so only my kids had ever met him. Nonetheless at several times during the ceremony I looked across to see both L and O in tears. It broke the tension somewhat and we were able to smile a bit. L got quite indignant and asked why I was laughing; I told him it was a coping mechanism and turned away to smirk.

I figure that L and O have a career as professional mourners if they want it, kind of like the film Wedding Crashers but with funerals.

Sharon (my wife) may have got a job out of all this. She has always wanted to try her hand at embalming but you need to be sponsored by a funeral home to do the course and the opportunities are limited as most of them are family run. However, she was asked to send them her resume so maybe this could be a change of career. I'm sure she would enjoy it.

Anyway that's it for now (boring wasn't it)

A beginning and an end

I've started this blog at an odd point in my life. Suddenly I have financial security but at the cost of losing an important and due to the lack of children in our family, a large percentage of my family. My Grandfather died on Tuesday. He made it through the Anzac day holiday, but suffered double renal failure that evening and passed during the night.

My parents have arrived and we are all busy trying to sort out, clean up and throw out most of the detritus of a life well lived. Just when momentum is gained, it is lost as we come across an item which causes a nostalgic moment that extends to a nostalgic hour and a couple of cuppas.

I know this feels unfinished, but its all I have at the moment...