Tim Hard at Work!

Here is Tim hard at work reading a paper, "Worrying trends in econophysics" (a real page-turner!). He is then going to write himself notes about the paper on his own personalized whiteboard.

Convenient Coffee

Tim's office looks down on the Business School Coffee Shop, which in turn has a lovely view across the tennis courts to the Brisbane River.

A hot day!

Today was very hot and the cats were sleeping in odd places all day...

Snoozing, not packing!

The cats have spent most of today snoozing, not packing...

Tim's First Day at Work

Tim had his first day at work as an official lecturer in the Business School today. The tie was a present from Evelyn - it helped him to make a good first impression!

Best Birthday Present!

Yesterday we toured the new house with both the building and the pest inspectors, and both gave the house two thumbs up! The bank also called with news all the final signatures had been obtained, and our loan is approved. So today, my birthday, the contract on the house becomes final, and we will take possession at 11am February 15th!

More Photos of the House

While we were at the house we took the opportunity to take more photos. Here I'm standing part way up the driveway. You can see it splits in two: the right half goes down to where we'll probably park the car regularly, while the left half goes beside the house and will be convenient for the moving truck to use.

Kitchen Photos

Here are photos (finally!) of the kitchen. It is spacious with lots of counter room. Both the oven and the cook range are gas.

Outside Laundry

Here is the laundry, outside of what we will be using as an office. This will help keep heat away from the house in the summer. We will get a wall-hanging dryer to go over our washing machine.

Front Entrance Hall

This is the front entrance hall, looking towards the open plan livingroom and the entrance to the master bedroom. It was a pretty hot day (about 100 farenheit) and most of the house was pretty cool. The building inspector recommended painting the rook white, and installing whirly-birds (fan outlets) in the roof to cool the attic spaces, which we may try to do over the winter....

Master Bedroom

Here are photos of the master bedroom from the deck, the walk-in closet (from about 1/2 way in) and the sinks in the ensuite bathroom. I can't believe we'll have that deck right off the bedroom!

Our New Cat!

This is a photo of Nellie, from the PawsPlus Maine Coon cattery, near our new home in Karana Downs. We've decided that since we are going to not have alpacas, that we would like to add to our cat family. We especially miss Newton's sunny personality - hence we have gone in search of another Maine Coon. Ann at the PawsPlus cattery had several excellent cats for sale, and we picked Nellie, who was super friendly and very beautiful. This photo does not do her justice - her tail is especially huge and fluffy. She also seems to have a very friendly and playful personality. Although Nellie is her cattery name, we are thinking of saying that this is short for Denali, the highest mountain in the USA, and in Tim's beloved Alaska - what do people think? :)

Our New House!

Last Thursday this house became available in Karana Downs, our preferred suburb. We saw it for the first time at noon of Saturday; Sunday we talked it over and decided we probably wanted to bid on it. Monday we viewed the house again at 5pm; at 6pm we put together the bid and signed the necessary paperwork with the real estate agent (in a local park - things are pretty informal here). After some back-and-forth bidding, the bid was accepted today!

Front of the House

The entryway to the house has large double wooden doors. I am thinking of planting low-growing ground-cover grevilleas (a native plant) on this front bit (instead of lawn...)

Open Plan Living/Dining Room

The deck of the house wraps around three sides, overlooking 1.3 acres of mostly native trees. The open-plan living/dining room runs 2/3 of the length of the house; kitchen is off to the right. Kitchen has medium-dark wooden cabinets and an island with a gas range. We are thinking eventually of laying wooden flooring (possibly bamboo, in a color like the coffee pictured here), but we'll leave things as is for at least a year to see what it's like living there...

Master Bedroom

These shots are of the master bedroom, which also faces out onto the deck overlooking the back yard. The ensuite has two sinks and is quite spacious; there is also a walk-in closet. The upper floor in the last photo is the master bedroom; where the clothes hanger is outside, we would put a hot tub, at some point... The planting beds are newly mulched and just waiting for some flowering shrubs, probably more grevilleas.

Lower Level of the House

The lower level of the house consists of a "granny flat" of a room (currently used as a bedroom) with a small kitchenette and another ensuite bathroom. We plan to use this space as our office. There are sliding doors out to where the hot tub will be (one day!), so the bathroom at that level is convenient.

The other half of the lower level is a large finished two car garage that Tim plans to use as his workshop, and which can also hold our exercise equipment.

The Deck

The deck is really wide - to me it is a perfect entertaining area. In the center photo you can see a sulfur-crested cockatoo on the railing.

Back and Front Gardens

The back garden (top photo) and front garden (bottom photo) both have plenty of places to plant native flowering shrubs and trees to attract native honeyeaters such as the blue-faced honeyeater below.

Excellent New Year's Eve

We had a lovely New Year's Eve BBQ with our friends Virgnia and Ted, who live in Anstead, near where we are looking for a house. They are from the States, and I made a bundt cake with Jello Devil's Food pudding, which went over very well....

Cats Get Their Own Presents

One of Nancy's students sent the cats a whole box of treats and toys!

A Big Sniffing Festival!

The cats especially liked the wind-up mice!

Zamboni Too Cute!

Zamboni has named his wind-up mousie "Fluffy."

New Ring

An unfortunate bad experience at the end of the year (me losing the 10th anniversary ring Tim had given me) has turned into a good event after we found this terrific ring on sale after Christmas. It is really neat, and Tim is very sweet!

Gromit masquerades as a present!

Gromit is here hoping nobody shakes him to find out what is inside....

Ornaments from far away

This year we decorated our tree with ornaments from the Pacific Northwest (courtesy of Arlene) and from New Zealand (courtesy of Nancy's trip there in September).

Pacific Northwest Ornament

Here is a lovely Pacific Northwest ornament depicting an owl.

New Zealand Ornaments

Here is Tim's albatross on top of our tree!

Christmas Day Birding

On Christmas Day we went birding up to Lake Manchester. We had a picnic of fresh bread and marinated feta that we'd bought that morning at a local farmer's market. Then we took a short hike along the lake. Although birds were scarce, it was a lovely hike.

All our ducks in a row

After our hike we were a bit tired and settled in to do some chores and catch up on reading. Here Nancy reads while waiting for the sheets to dry - reading, with a little assistance from her three helpers.