In Retrospect

it would probably have been better to have picked Stella up from the hospital in Frankston on Tuesday morning (a process which took much, much longer than I had expected it to), taken Tony to see his GP in Rosebud at lunchtime (something else which took longer than I had expected it to) and then stayed overnight in Mount Martha heading to Mount Helen on Wednesday morning.

As it was, by the time we had got back to Mount Martha after the GP visit, got packed and organised, very carefully packed the car with two walkers and everything else that was coming with us, got ourselves in the car and set off, by the time we had done all that we hit the Monash at peak hour and found it very, very busy what with road works, minor accidents and other hazards.  Then we got to Richmond and found the approach to the Burnley Tunnel at a complete standstill (I think there had been an accident on the approach to the Westgate Bridge).  The satnav took us off the freeway and then all around the houses until eventually it dropped us back onto the bridge.  It was well after six by the time we got to Mount Helen.  We hadn't had any lunch and everyone was tired and hungry.

We should have waited and come up on Wednesday morning!

No matter. We're all here now.  The builders have been and installed beautiful new doors and windows in the lounge room and kitchen. I went to work yesterday and tackled the mountain of scanning that had accumulated in my absence.  Mind you, I am really not sure what is happening with the traffic at the moment.  It's the school holidays and I had expected things to be better than normal. There were two absolutely massive hold ups getting back from work yesterday. The satnav tried to take me off the freeways both times, but the first time it changed its mind too late for me to change lanes and take the exit and at the second hold up I couldn't see any point in coming off the freeway, driving around loads of back roads in the dark and rejoining the freeway later.

Rupert has been here for a whole week and is settling in quite nicely.  He and Sam are mostly getting on quite well, although Sam wasn't even a little bit impressed when Rupert tried to take his pig's ear.  He wasn't absolutely delighted this morning either when Rupert (accidentally, I think) jumped on him while he (Sam) was having a nice sleep.

I have a couple of online Japanese lessons over the weekend and there's a baking festival today and tomorrow in the Mining Exchange. It's supposed to be very cold in and around Ballarat over the weekend but I think it's supposed to be quite nice.  We could take Tony and Stella for a drive, or out shopping or out for lunch. So many possibilities before us!