Tubing the Yous

It's me again, I was just watching some YouTube videos and thought about how things have changed and what hasn't. It's one of those things that make me remember about this blog. I can't believe that it's been so long since I last wrote here. 

About two months ago, I started playing a game that I used to play about 7 years ago, DayZ. I really enjoyed playing it again and I decided to make a little video of me playing it and published it to YouTube. I can't remember if I've mentioned this previously or not, but about 7 years ago I tried to start a YouTube channel based around some of the games I was playing. I made half a dozen videos and shared them with the friends I was gaming with and that was about it.

Currently I'm up to about 15 new videos, I currently publish one each week and have them scheduled to come out for the next 7 or so weeks. I'm enjoying making the videos and editing them. I guess I'm putting to use some of the skills I started practicing back when I wanted to make a motovlog channel.

I have about 3 or 4 more videos I can make with the gaming that I've already captured and I have a couple of ideas for other videos in DayZ.

On to other life updates. Construction is still yet to start on our new house, the plans have been submitted to council and we're waiting for the approval to come through. I'm still in the same job and I'm still over weight. I haven't bought a new bike yet either. Oh well some things never change.

My mental heath has been suffering a bit lately, but I think that's mainly due to the stress I've been experiencing because of work. There's just so much that needs to be done at the moment and I still have people in my team that get away with doing nothing. The team has a new boss, so I'm hoping that he'll be able to straighten things out a little and let me get on with actually enjoying my job again.

Anyway, that's quite a lot for now, considering it's been so long, I don't know if I'll get back to writing more often again or not at this stage.

Bomber
I thought I'd just say g'day!

Merry Christmas

We managed to make it down the coast for Christmas. It's about a 2 hour drive and the traffic was surprisingly light on Christmas Eve. Our kids were well behaved at night and we all got up around 6am to see if Santa had paid us a visit. Thankfully, he had and no one had any coal in their stockings. My wife's parents put on a great lunch with plenty of food and my wife's sister joined us too. My wife's brother didn't join us this year, he's become more and more of a recluse in recent years and pulling away from the family a little. Neither my sister-in-law or brother-in-law have partners or kids of their own, which is a little odd and means that our kids don't have any cousins on my wife's side of the family, it makes Christmas a lot smaller than it could be, which is probably nice in some ways but sad in others.

What was  nice to get away from town, even if only for a couple of nights, it was a break from the everyday routine and it was nice to not have to worry about cooking dinner for a couple of nights at the very least. 

I rediscovered my love of reading last night which is great too. For the last year or two I've been watching an episode of some show or another in bed each night before going to sleep. I've enjoyed the shows but at times they have kept me up later than I would have liked. I'd packed my Kindle for the trip down the coast as I thought I might have to tuck myself away with a book at some stage to get some peace, but I didn't end up having to do that. However, last night, as we had no TV in our room, I decided to read a couple of chapters from a new book and I really enjoyed it. I read another couple of chapters this morning and again this afternoon.

Bomber
More to share, but not for a Christmas post.

 

We Have Choices

In the last few days or so, my wife and I went and paid a visit to the kitchen manufacturer for our new house. I thought that my wife had some idea of what she wanted and that it could be fairly quick. Boy was I wrong. We ended being there for at least an hour and we only really had three decisions to make. We knew the style of cupboards we wanted, we'd already been given the proposed design and we were happy with it, all we had to do was.
1. Pick the colour of cabinets
2. Pick the colour of the bench top
3. Choose the handles for the cupboards

My wife had spoken to me lots about what she thought she wanted so I was surprised when she couldn't decide what colour the cupboards should be and if she wanted the the island bench cupboards to be the same as everything else or a different colour. We're going for a sort of Hampton's look which I thought was pretty straight forward. White, white, more white and maybe a little grey. Well the kitchen place had several whites and a whole wall of greys. I probably would have made my mind up in a minute or two, but most of the time was spent just on the colour of the cupboards. 

We then looked at the different styles of benchtops, unfortunately, the ones we wanted weren't in our budget so we've had to compromise a little, the one I think we have chosen is a slightly more expensive then the standard range but it shouldn't be too much more and it does look quite nice. I think it will probably look the nicest in the laundry and bathrooms as we're using the same bench top throughout the house, but it will still look nice in the kitchen.

Finally it was the handles turn, that was relatively painless, but what we've chosen may not go with the tapware so we may need to make more changes later on.

At the end of all of that, my wife still couldn't pull the trigger so we came away with a large number of samples that we have been pouring over.

Next stop was the tile shop, we need to select tiles for the wet areas of the house. We pulled into the parking lot of the tile place, but didn't manage to get out of the car, we drove off again as we couldn't face selecting tiles, especially since we hadn't chosen the cupboard and bench top colours.

We did manage to make it to the flooring shop. We walked in and managed to talk to the right people who actually knew about our build and had started working on the plans. I pulled out a copy of the build contract as it had the ranges that we were meant to be selecting from listed in it. The salesperson said that it was only a guide as there was plenty of other flooring that would be in the same price bracket but we decided to start looking within the range that was listed and managed to pretty quickly decide on the type of floorboards that we were going to have. Next there was the carpet, again just sticking within the listed range there was only two or three that worked with the floorboards and we made a decision in around a minute. Finally, the flooring place is also supplying the blinds as well so we had to choose them. The contract states blockout roller blinds and that's what we would have wanted anyway so too easy. From the listed range there was only two that worked with flooring choices and one of them worked really well with the carpet so that's what we chose.

The sales person then tried to up-sell us on better underlay for the carpet and I read out what was in the contract and we were already meant to be getting the premium underlay and then he asked if we wanted acoustic underlay for the floorboards and I told him that was already in the contract and showed him that. At least the builder wasn't trying to make the contract cheaper by using the cheapest options. None of the flooring was the top of the range options but it was far from the bottom. 

We still have to go back and choose the tiles at some stage as well as make all the interior paint colour decisions, but they should be relatively easy.

 

Bomber
Have I told you that I'm colour-blind? I truly am.

Bettering? More like failing.

I started this blog for a number of reasons, go back and read the first post for a detailed breakdown if you'd like, but the photo to the right is from the night I decided to try and do something; And really, what's changed? Sadly not very much at all. 

This last week or two has been a tough one. I've basically given up on dieting and I'm fighting with my son a lot. I also feel pretty exhausted, so it could all be tied together.

I do struggle with my kids at times, I'm sure most if not all parents do struggle from time to time, but I just worry that I'm screwing them up or will end up with them not wanting to be around me as they get older.

My son is really just like me, so we bump heads all the time, it drives my wife crazy and my daughter ends up going to her room to get away from the noise. I do try and keep my cal, but my son just somehow manages to push all my buttons and unleashes a part of me that I'm not proud of. 

I'm going to have to try harder with controlling myself and not letting my son get under my skin so much. I do love both my children very much.

Diet wise, I've had the shake a couple of times during the week but if I'm honest, breakfast was never really the problem. It's the snacking before and after dinner and throughout the weekend that really does me in. I was really good for a couple of weeks, but it has all basically fallen over again. I need to focus on doing better with that too.

I was about to say that I'd done better with my alcohol intake, but now that I think about it, I haven't done that great there either. I had that bottle of bourbon which I ended up having two or three bourbon and cokes most evenings. Then last weekend I bought a six pack of beer. The only reason I've not had anything to drink this weekend is because I'm on call for work, I would have bought another six pack on Friday just gone if I wasn't on call.

This yoyo that I've got going up and down for years is getting tiring, a long time ago I heard someone way something like "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired" and that's just how I feel.

Bomber
possibly burnt out.

 

Setting Foot

Late last week, my wife was on Facebook and noticed that someone in the community had posted about a new section of road being open in the development. It was after dinner and the kids were already in their pyjamas, but we jumped in the car and headed up to see what we could see as we were pretty sure that we could now actually get a lot closer to our new block.

As it turned out, we were able to stand at the end of our new driveway. The view is going to be great from the new block and the open space directly across the road is bigger and flatter that I thought it was going to be so it will be great to be able to kick the footy or throw a ball. Basically it has the potential to become an extension to our yard space for the kids as they could go and play there whenever they liked and we'd be able to see them out the windows of our house.

The photo above is from a couple of days later as it was getting dark when visited it the first time. As you can see it was pretty wet and cloudy when the photo was taken, so it doesn't really do justice to the view of the ranges that we will have, or the lights we'll see at night. I'll wait until we have some nice weather and I'll go and take some nicer photos.

Whilst we were at the block the first time, we actually met the people who have bought the block diagonally behind us. They were a nice couple around the same age as my wife and I, as we talked more, I wondered why the bloke looked so familiar and eventually we realised that our sons were the same age and in fact played in the same footy team last season! We both felt a little embarrassed that we didn't figure that out sooner considering we both would have been at a lot of the games our kids had.

It will still be several months before our land actually registers and we'll be able to get further onto our block. At the moment there is a big fence blocking access to our site as our neighbourhood is still being worked on by the developer. But this is still exciting and we are happy that we jumped onto this block as fast as we did as it is in a fantastic location and is by far one of the best blocks in the area.

Bomber
Who knew that a small piece of dirt could be so exciting.

Losing 20kg in 2 Months

I was leaving work the other day and bumped into a mate that I hadn't seen a quite a while. We started talking and I mentioned that it looked like he had lost some weight. It turns out that he had being on a Keto diet and the weight just fell off him. He lost 20kg in just 2 months. That's crazy.

My mate went into quite a bit of detail about the research he'd done and how his doctor had been into him about losing weight. He tried doing some other diets and had been riding his push bike a lot and ended up getting a week long migraine. He went on to say that he used to regularly get migraines and he'd been talking to another friend about his woes and that person told him to try a Keto diet as they often cured issues with migraines.

According to my mate, he went from watching his diet and counting calories, to eating whatever he wanted and as much of it as he felt like, as long as it fell within the Keto diet and the weight just fell off him. He did say that he felt a little queasy for a couple of weeks as his body purged itself off everything from his old diet but now he felt healthier and more energetic than he had in years and his eyesight, hearing and brain power had all improved.

I won't go into all the conspiracy theories that my mate had about Dr Kellogg and why he said we needed to eat so much fibre, or steam engines and counting calories, or even age old theories that red meat was to blame for male aggression which was why we were being told to eat less of it. I might do some of my own research into that but there was no doubt that my mate looked fit and healthy and he said that a Keto diet was what was working for him.

My own weight loss journey isn't going that great, I haven't had a beer in a long time but this last week I've basically been eating whatever and not really avoiding sweets. My wife had a birthday so we had cake and family over for big feed. I bought a bottle of Wild Turkey and some Coke and have been having a glass or two of that each night recently. I've also had an ice cream each night this week.

I've still been having the protein shake for breakfast each day and trying to have a healthy(ish) lunch. Dinners haven't been so bad either but I do each a lot of bread, pasta and potatoes each week so I'm thinking that there may be a reason that I don't really lose much weight and I find it hard to keep any weight lost from returning.

The more I think about it, the more I think that I may be able to give a Keto diet a go. Breakfasts are easy as I think I'd be able to keep having the protein shake. Bacon and eggs is also a staple of the Keto diet so no issues there, you can also have basically as much of it as you want, no problems there. Lunch I could still go to the same place (which is usually subway) and get a wrap or even just a bowl with the meat and salad in it. Dinners would be a little harder, but I'm sure I could replace a lot of the potato that I currently eat with cauliflower or other veggies and make sure that I have some nuts to snack on if I need to. The hard part will be trying to cut out the pasta as my wife and kids love pasta and so do I.

Swap anything that you use in place of butter for real butter, use only extra virgin olive oil, eat red meat, fish and chicken, cut out bread, pasta, potatoes and sugary things. Your body should then go into ketosis and start burning fat to produce all the energy you need, which means I should have a whole lot of energy! Could it really be that simple? could I be like my mate and lose 20 kilos in two months?

Bomber
Can I eat my way to weight loss.

Designing a Dream

As you know from last weeks blog, we now have the perfect block to build our dream home on. I guess it's the dream we can afford more than what we would build if money was no issue, but it's still going to be pretty awesome.

What has driven the design is that my wife and I both wanted to try and get a view of the ranges and we
wanted a dedicated guest room with it's own en-suite. We turned the spare room in our current house into our study and whilst guests can stay in it, there's only room for a double blow up mattress and even then it's very tight. We want a dedicated guest room and we want space for a dedicated study. What we've ended up with for the new study is essentially a spare bedroom, but we won't be putting guests up in very often if at all.

One of the reasons for having a dedicated guest room is so guests feel more comfortable staying with us and also to allow for our parents to live with us if they want to, or need to, as they get older. My Dad currently lives by himself in the house I grew up in and he's approaching 80. I really don't want him to have to go into a nursing home if I can avoid it. At the moment he is doing just fine and can still drive himself around, but really, he could fall over and hurt himself at any time, or be told by his doctor that he can't drive anymore, or that he needs live in help. Having the dedicated guest room means that he has an option if wants to use it. If my Dad did end up in a nursing home, then the rest of the family would have somewhere to stay if they came to visit.

My wife's parents are quite a bit younger than my Dad and they currently live a couple of hours away from us. However, the nearest major hospital for them is close to where we live, so if one of them got really sick and needed to stay in hospital or nearby the hospital for any length of time then they could stay with us. It would also allow them to stay with us during school holidays as our kids are starting to push back about heading down the coast for week each holiday.

One of the other things that my wife wanted was another living area. I'm not really sure why she wanted it but it has morphed from being just another living area into a small home theatre room, which I'm now quite looking forward to.

So, now we had to get all the ideas down on paper. We initially started off with one of the builders existing plans and tried to modify it into something that we liked. We came up with a few ideas and sent them off to the builders sales rep to pass on to their architect. The architect was very slow to get back to us, we kept getting told that they are very busy at the moment and that's the reason for the delays but it would be around four to six weeks from when we would talk with the sales rep and when we would see the changes on the plans.

After a bit of back and forth we just weren't happy with the way the plans were looking, so we basically drew up a complete layout ourselves and sent if off to the sales rep. They said that we would have to pay them more money as we were now going completely custom. We agreed to send them a further $3500 so the new plans could be drawn up. We had a couple more back and forth meetings with the sales rep and the architect still couldn't grasp what we were trying to achieve and the house kept getting bigger and bigger and changes we asked for weren't getting included whilst other things were getting added that we'd either didn't ask for or had already asked to be removed. It was really frustrating.

During this time there was another land release and we decided that we would enter the ballot to see if we could secure another block, a block that was not tied to a builder so we would have a little more time to design the house. We could also select a different builder as we didn't really select the builder we were using, we just really wanted the block that they had, so we had to use that builder. It would only cost us $1,000 to secure a block and again it was a risk we were willing to take.

When the ballot was drawn we received an email stating that our name hadn't even been selected at all and we wouldn't be given a chance to even try and select a block. There was only one block that we could have been interested in so the chances were slim in the first place. We continued on with our current block, considering that we were now $5,000 in it made sense.

We still weren't happy with the way that the plans were turning out until my wife
actually found the perfect house plans for us on another builders website. We forwarded the new plans to the builders sales rep and they weren't too impressed and tried to ask for more money. We ended up saying no to sending them more money and explained that they hadn't been able to come up with plans that met our requirements and they hadn't been able to capture the external look that my wife was wanting.

The plans went off to the builders architect, who I now think is more of a draftsman than an actual architect, and when they came back there were still things that had been missed and the design had been changed enough that it wouldn't have been compliant with local guidelines. So it had to go back to the architect again.

It was now approaching the end of August and we finally received a set of plans that we were basically happy with, there were still issues with the plans, but only minor things like typos and some of the written measurements didn't line up with what had been drawn. The builder wanted all of those things corrected before issuing us with a build contract so we had to wait another couple of weeks before we could sign on with the builder officially.

Come the end of September, we finally signed on with the builder and committed to building our new home. We then exchanged on the land contract and paid the builder a further $5,000. The builder did issue us with an invoice for $33,000 but we questioned it as the building contract clearly stated that they couldn't ask for more money until they had secure insurance for the build and they weren't planning on doing that until they were closer to actually starting work.

So where are we now? Well, we've exchanged on the land but the land itself can't settle until it has been registered. For it to be registered, the developer needs to have everything signed off and handed over to the local council because it will then be the council who will be responsible for maintaining the roads, sewers, storm water etc from then on. Once the land has registered and we've settled on it, the purchase of the land will be complete so the builder can then submit the plans to council to get approval to build it. Once the plans are approved, the builder has 21 days to commence building and then 52 weeks to complete the build. There are reasons that the build can be delayed, but as we are now out of lockdown and living with COVID-19, it should be unlikely that there are any delays.

Bomber
Fingers crossed we don't go broke.