Category: Hubs

Happy Anniversary!

/ Renae / 3 Comments

Happy 1st Wedding Anniversary to Wifey & Hubs!!

Here we are just over 1 year ago:


Hubs woke up to a real treat Monday morning, when I sang a song that my Dad used to sing to Mum on their Anniversary: (to the tune of Happy Birthday)

Happy Happy Anniversareeeeeeeeeee
Happy Happy Anniversareeeeeeeeeee
Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy Happy
Happy Happy Anniversareeeeeeeeeee!

Okay, so Dad is not known for his musical genius, but we always knew how much he loves Mum. And now the tradition has been passed on to us! Then Hubs surprised ME with 2 gorgeous roses:


Hand made of course!


(I found out later that he hadn’t done any of his uni work for 3 days cos he was working on the roses! TOTALLY worth it from where I’m standing!)

Hubs also gave me this card:


which totally cracked me up!

We had a disc game on Monday night, so we went out for dinner along Hardware Lane in town on Tuesday night.
We had oysters for entree which were SO YUMMY


And the restaurant even sprinkled hearts all over our table for us! We had a lovely night listening to some jazz (which is what you do in Hardware lane)


And just generally had a lovely night out. Thank you Hubs for a wonderful year and I look forward to MANY more to come.

A Star is Born

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I’d like to paint a picture for you. A lovely Sunday afternoon in Melbourne (such a thing DOES exist), some wine, cheese and bickies, a picnic blanket, great company, and a huge oval field of luscious green grass. At each end, 4 giant poles stand in anticipation of the game that’s about to begin. The referee takes the field, looking a little worse for wear – like he’d had a big night out the night before. On one side are the Ormondians, geared up for the 4th and last game of their short season. And on the other side are the Newman Stars.

For those who don’t know much about arial ping-pong (aka AFL) 18 players from each side take the field and not only did 18 Newman boys run on at the start of the match, they had another full team on the bench. Such is the excitement of playing college football.

A bit of background information for you about the Newman boys: They have 2 teams at the college, The Firsts (like Australia) and the Stars (like Australia A). The Firsts generally do very well (incidently they are playing in the finals next weekend.) The Stars have got a lot of heart, but not much of that translates to points on the scoreboard. In fact, the Stars team hadn’t won a game since 2005. But in the first few minutes, they proved to their opposition that they were going to put up a fight. With 2 early goals in the first 5 minutes, they just about passed their total number of points scored all season. And it didn’t stop there!

The points kept coming, and in the middle of it all was a young Queensland boy, in boots bought only an hour before kick-off, who was putting his body on the line for his team and for College pride, and on the sideline sat the most proud, impressed Wifey you can imagine! I was also accompanied by a few friends who came down to watch and it was so much fun! One of Hub’s friends even came all the way from Brisbane to watch him play!

Hubsband had an absolute ball and after his first game a couple of weeks before, he started using tactics (trying not to get killed) and really got in to it (sometimes involuntarily!!) The final score was something like 65 to 20 and it was a great afternoon. Here are some happy snaps:

Hubs about to take a classic catch (oops, wrong sport) a MARK during warm-up (doesn’t he look sexy in his jersey!!??)

A few members of Hubs’ fan club

The Team Victory Photo 24th August 2008

The Everlasting Gobstopper

/ Renae / 1 Comment

My awesome brother and his gorgeous girlfriend went to Hahndorf, just outside of Adelaide (thanks for the correction bro!) for a wee trip a while ago and brought us back presents!! Everlasting Gobstoppers!! Hubsband’s was about the size of a golf ball, but since (apparently) I have a big mouth, mine was more like a tennis ball. Hubsband finished his off in a week or 2, and the proceeded to work on mine.

Here’s what it would have looked like before (if we’d taken a photo!):


And here’s what happens after a month of sitting in front of a computer, licking a gobstopper:


I must admit, I was very impressed with his persistence! I’m just worried about his next dentist bill… and he’s only half way through!!

Check out the lay-yers!

Nerdy McNerd

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I got in touch with my inner-nerd last week and attended “Game On” with Hubsband; “Melbourne’s must-see exhibition of 2008 – the action-packed celebration of games culture that has thrilled over one million players of all ages around the world. Game On tracks the development of videogames from the first computer game to arcade-era hits and the very latest from today’s billion dollar industry.” Make that one million and two players!

I was a little skeptical at first, thinking it was going to be another nerd convention like SupaNova but I was pleasantly surprised at the number of normal people there! (Ha ha. Sorry honey. Just cos you’re a nerd, doesn’t mean you’re not normal.) But seriously, there were children, girlfriends, wifeys, mothers (mostly carrying around jackets and sitting around waiting for hubsbands and kids to get tired) and everyone in between. And the games! We got to play quite a few different games including:

Pong
Frogger
Mario Cart
Star Wars (the arcade game with the vector images)
Tron arcade game
Puzzle Bubble
Gravity
Donkey Kong (game and watch)
Indy 500
Adventure on the Atari
Populous
Chillingham

… just to name a few! There were quite a few people there but there were also quite a few games to play so there was always something to do. We even ran into Yahtzee, but we almost didn’t recognise him cos he wasn’t wearing his trademark hat.

We also checked out the game consoles that had been made over the last 36 years which was actually quite interesting. We finished off with about half an hour in the theatre watching the “Machinima Showcase” which is a “new kind of filmmaking that uses computer games technology to ‘shoot’ film.” Yeah, I found it boring too but Hubs enjoyed it. It gave me a chance to have a rest, so I was happy.

We were there for 3 hours, then I decided it was time to go home. I was all nerded out for one day!

Hubsband playing Populous

Wifey posing with Lara Croft. Yeah, I think I’m heaps better looking too…

The Hickey. Friend or foe?

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The thing about being married to a 22 year old (or someone who’s 27 who still THINKS he’s 22) is that every now and then Hubs thinks it’s HILARIOUS to give me a hickey. When we first started going out, I was mortified by this, however I soon got in to the spirit of things and started giving as good as I got:


I was actually pretty good at it! This was one I gave him for his birthday last year just before we were leaders on a kid’s camp! (Actually, I think there are 2 hickeys there!!! Yeah!)

And here’s Hub’s most recent handy work at our going away party in June:


But I reckon he’s losing his touch. (Can you even see it?) Although that might mean he’ll want some more practice. I know I’ll probably regret saying this, but hickeys don’t really bother me that much anymore, as long as I don’t have an interview or a special occasion coming up. Plus Hubs gave them to me so often at one stage that it was normal to see Wifey sporting a new hickey at church each week!

So thank you, dear Hubsband, for keeping us young and completely unclassy!

(To learn how to remove hickeys, click here, though I’ve never bothered with anything other than make up!)

Dread Head

/ Renae / 1 Comment

One of my goals this year was to learn some new skills. Some things I had in mind were to do a sign language course, to get back in to some sewing, and to perhaps try my hand at a new sport. What I DIDN’T have in mind was learning how to give someone dreadlocks.

Hubsband: Honey, I’ve wanted dread locks for a while now, can I get them?
Wifey: Sure, how much are they?
Hubsband: $500 to get them done at the salon….
Wifey: $500??????????
Hubsband: or $150 for a DIY kit that you can buy on-line which means you could dread my hair! Wouldn’t that be tee-yodally awesome?
Wifey: Ummmmmmmmmmmmm….. sure, okay….

So the kit was ordered, and on ANZAC Day 2008 (a Friday) we began.
Before we begin: Say goodbye to Hubsband’s beautiful, untangled, luscious hair (sniff)

Step One: Section off the hair in to 1 inch squares and put them in rubber bands. I made 70 sections, a perfect 35 on each side. (2 hours)


Step Two: Spray the hair with Locking Accelerator – stuff that knots your hair up good and proper (5 minutes)

Step Three: Backcombing. Now on the instructional DVD, it takes about 5 minutes to explain this process, but takes a lot longer to do. Basically it’s teasing the hair, but in a gradual way so as not to create big messy clumps of hair. It takes about 100 strokes per inch of dread, and some of Hub’s hair was 14 inches long!! I managed to get it to about 20 minutes per dread which I was quite happy with. Here are some of Hub’s first dreads:

Now before I go on to Step 4, let me give you an insight into our “dread week”:
Friday: 12noon til 9:30pm – Sectioning, backcombing, finished 14 dreads (my hands were like claws when I went to bed – I could hardly move them. But they were okay on Saturday)
Saturday: 8:00am (Hubs made me a cooked brekky to start the day off) til 3:00pm – 15 Dreadlocks. Then I went to a hen’s night!
Sunday: 7:30pm (late start) til 10:30pm – 7 Dreadlocks
So by this stage Hubs had half a head of dreads. AND he had to go to work on Monday morning! Tee hee! We really thought I’d be finished by now, but we were only half way through.
Monday: 4:00pm til 10:30pm – 17 Dreadlocks (and Wifey was getting a little tired of this by now!)
Tuesday: 5:00pm til 10:30pm – 14 Dreadlocks. I only had 3 to go but just couldn’t do it that night
Wednesday: BLISS!! Finished the last 3!! Or so I thought….

Step Four: Waxing the little friggers. Each dread had to be waxed and rolled which took about an hour. Then they had to be blow dried so the wax really soaks in. That took another half an hour. And low and behold, Wednesday night my Hubs had dreads. Total time physically working on them (excluding breaks): 33 hours.

And since then he’s had heaps of comments on how awesome they are (not just from me!) They do look really great actually. And because all the hair gets caught in them (eew) it doesn’t fall out all over the place! Hooray! I must admit that I feel a sense of pride when Hubs tells people that I did his hair for him. It’s certainly a new skill that I’ve learnt! Oh, and I NEVER want to do it again!

Trebu…what?

/ Renae / 4 Comments

Question: What is a trebuchet?
Answer: A medieval military catapult for hurling heavy stones

Up until a few months ago, I had no idea what a trebuchet was until a good friend of my Hubsband’s (who should have known better and shall remain nameless) emailed around an ad advertising a trebuchet that was for sale. He did this as a bit of a joke, but Hubs thought it would be a GREAT idea to get a few mates to pitch in and buy the thing. Why? To fling stuff in the park behind our house of course!!

So the planning began and after a few false starts, a trip was made by one of Hubsband’s other crazy friends to pick the thing up. Upon arrival however, they saw how HUGE this contraption was and realised they had bitten of more treb than they could chew. Now when I say huge, I mean huge:

Click here for more information
The dimensions are:
Width: 2m
Length: 2.2m
Height: 5m (including the “throwing arm”)

After some negotiations, crazy friend instead purchased the prototype that the guy used to build the larger one which was much more manageable:

By around 2pm on that lovely Sunday afternoon, about 20 blokes (not including the original nameless friend who saw the ad in the first place!) in various medieval get-up had descended upon our back yard and were keen to fling! We headed to the park and proceeded to set up the treb as well as a target to hit. It has a range of about 30 meters so that was a bit less scary than the original 100m range of the larger model.

A fun time was had by all, and once the beer and bbq had wrapped up and the light was fading, of course it was decided to set fire to things and fling them!

Thankfully the police remained blissfully unaware of the event and the trebuchet is sitting quietly in Hubsband’s Mum’s garage.

Til we fling again….


The flingers

Ugg-ly!

/ Renae / 2 Comments


Now don’t get me wrong. I like Ugg-boots just as much as the next bevan, but come on people! Ugg boots are an INSIDE boot, not an outside boot. This fact seems to escape a LOT of people in our new home town.

Now I know residents of Brisvegas are guilty of wearing their Uggies outside the comfort of their own homes as well. In fact, I find it quite hilarious that it’s not cold enough in Queensland to wear Ugg boots with warm clothes as well, so people wear the Ugg in public with shorts and singlets! And the number of outside-Uggers increases, the further north you go!

But I have to admit, the number of outside Ugg-wearers I’ve seen since we touched down in Melbourne 4 days ago has astounded me. I can’t help but point and laugh.

I’ve seen Uggs over jeans, Uggs with stockings and skirts, Uggs popping out from underneath trousers, and of course, Uggs teamed with trackie-dacks. What a sight!

Now as I mentioned earlier, I AM a fan of the boot. I even had my parents ship my old Uggies over to Edinburgh when my little tootsies were freezing off in the Scottish winter. And boy they did the job. I had to retire them that winter after 11 years of service. And Hubsband (pictured) has Uggs that he has barely taken off since we arrived in Melbourne, except when he goes outside… (okay. So there was ONE time where he was caught out, but it was only brief and only witnessed by one person who swore never to speak of the incident.)

So if you are Ugg-lovers as we are, please respect the Ugg-rules and keep your Uggs indoors, where they belong.