7th February (Monday)

Hallelujah! Grey skies!

We had rain yesterday, RAIN. Currently an almost-chilly 18 degrees. OK it's 6:30 in the morning but it makes a change from the usual 32 degrees by the same time for the rest of this sweltering month. It's been a solid 43 degrees for several days now. We were thinking we'd have to start spreading towels on the sofas before we sat down on them. No doubt the heat will come back but a respite even for a few hours is bliss.

Talking of hot, we went to a little wedding-celebration thing at the Botanical Gardens on Saturday. It was in a shaded place but after all, outside... and 43 degrees. One of Pete's lab people, Xiao (that's the bride). In true bridal fashion she seemed to be absolutely fine and merely glowed: heat didn't seem to touch her; but the rest of us were shedding cupfuls of sweat by the minute and draping ourselves around the place in various ungainly postures.

The kids played a continual game of pelting each other with ice from the drinks-coolers. After three hours of this they were pretty wet. Lara stripped down to her birthday suit for the trip home in the car. Not that we told her to. Just got to the the car park and she promptly disrobed. Sat down naked on the car seat with something more gleeful an expression than would strictly be necessary, under the circumstances.

On the way back we listened to the rest of the 'Beyonce' CD we'd just borrowed from the library. Oh yes, Beyonce. She specifically wanted a track on it called 'all the single ladies' for her party. We tracked the one available library copy of this CD for Hamilton library online, and pounced on it. Well. I'll put that track on for her but frankly I think that's going to be the extent of my investigation work on Beyonce Knowles.

I had a marvellous time on Sunday morning. Ian chivalrously took Lara to Nippers (as usual) and I had the whole morning to myself. While they splashed and paddled surfboards, I tidied and worked on my website and all those things that Mrs generally likes to do.

In the afternoon Anna called and said would we like to come over and sit in the air conditioning for a while, so we did. The Mr took a well-deserved break and sat and watched some cricket at home. I sat there and chatted while the Littles played Lego and DS with Lillian (we took ours so that they could hook up and play together, one on each DS – no tears this time).

I also came home with a pair of scales. Every time I go over there I seem to walk off with some piece of household equipment: last time it was a picnic table. Invariably Anna has at least two of everything because she's got all her mum's stuff she inherited. She's now whittling away at her possessions because of the move to Tasmania (hopefully) coming up. Did I tell you about our scales? (oh the thrill). We've been without for a while ever since ours packed up with a groan of 'one at a time, please' and displayed weight no more. I finally got down to K-Mart the other day and bought a shiny new set, all nice and sleek and digital. Never clapped eyes on anything less accurate. Step on, step off, step on, and it'll give you any number of varied readings within about a 2.5km radius. So it's back in its box, ready for the return pile.