It's STILL raining!

…but the ‘old man’ ain’t, snoring, not quite anyway…for what was meant to be a drought summer, it sure is raining hard outside, But it’s OK, I’m inside, the twins are asleep and I’m just taking a break from my Miami Vice nostalgia with a detour through JAG Season 4. I have to say that I much prefer these older shows to much of the currently screening rubbish. I hated JAG when it fist released because it so blatantly ‘borrowed’ from other series and movies but now I am a sucker for it’s true blue hero themes,,,none of that socalled gritty realism, counter-culture, antiheroes so common now…and if not those, then it’s cooking and reality shows, or cookoing reality shows!

I really wish they would other 80s classics like Highwayman and Call to Glory…in Singapore, Call to Glory was must-see TV in 9 Platoon as we were all hooked on the trials and tribulations of the Sarnac family against the backdrop of key events of the early 60s like the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam and the Kennedy assassination…

The Christmas tree is all lit up on the pool table with a growing stack of parcels underneath…this is the first Christmas where the twins actually have an idea of what’s up with this Christmas thing – we’re doing Christmas here a week early so the twins and their parents can do the in-law thing for Christmas proper…so Carmen and I actually have Christmas to ourselves and we are so looking forward to being able to just put our feet up with a big jar of chilled sangria and some of Carmen’s ‘legless’ smoothies (just try one to see why they got that name!)…

Post the last round of house relocations, we’ve just about cleared the garage again…all the gym equipment has gone into what was going to be the hobby hut and the corner of the garage that was the gym is now going to be the hobby workspace. So hopefully, I’ll be able to make some progress on a number of modelling build projects over Christmas/New Year and might even finish something! Scale Model Expo is planned for August 2011 and really do need to have something (at least one thing) put on the table this year.

I’ve been working from home the last couple of weeks and it has taken me a while to get into a balanced routine which delivers a full work day while still giving me the time to do work around home which is the whole idea of having a ‘work from home’ summer programme…on the work front, we’ve made some major progress – we trialed the NATO doctrine review template and found it to be one of the better tool we’ve found in years…it’s a lot more work but forces a line by line review of a publication and now that we have the system mastered, we should be able to chew through reviews with relative speed but a far more detailed and robust review product.

On the domestic chores front, I have a break every couple of hours and take the dogs for a ‘patrol’ looking for those wascally wabbits and chop some wood, trim edges, barrow dirt and gravel and little by little progress the development programme. The dogs like to roam within the section and during summer we’re happy to let them as we have some 20,000 bees occupying the primary canine escape route down the old SH4…

So this evening, time for another JAG while I progress my Russian river monitor…touch wood, the sun will come out tomorrow so the twins can burn off energy outside so they sleep well for their first of two Christmas Eves this year…

Russian River Monitor Udarnyj