Thursday 5

I finished setting up A's iPad 2 this afternoon and even though there were a couple of difficult moments as we tried to secure the WiFi network we had just created with their new Airport Express, it was all a great success. you would expect that on A's birthday!

But the iPad is not the only thing she got ... M and N had planned a surprise - with N visiting, unannounced from Canberra for a "long" weekend. a had no idea she was coming - I know this because tomorrow when I asked her when she was seeing N next, she said 20 August. I am just thankful I didn't give it away. I would have loved to have seen the look on A's face when N was revealed hiding in the pantry cupboard!

I called in on Mi on the way home from A's to talk secret birthday business and Mi will, now we have finished conferring, buy the gift tomorrow ready for us to give it to A on the weekend. (Thanks Mi.)

My friend J's birthday is tomorrow, and I had an SMS early this evening asking if we were free to go to dinner. Noooo .... This presents a dilemma ... doesn't she know that Friday is reserved for Family & Friends dinner? I wonder what The Great K is doing and whether he will phone seeing what we are up to? (Must drop those files he was after onto a stick or a card and let him know they are done.). So F&F dinner remains and we'll catch up with J soon (and we have already booked next year's birthday celebrations in!)

M has started talking about plans for Saturday. After breakfast, there is some talk of MovieWorld and then a game of putt putt in the evening, depending on what little H wants to do. It sounds like a plan. It has been an age since we've played putt putt - and hopefully we'll make a better fist of that than we have at bowling!

There is another pedometer challenge at work which starts the day before the Global Corporate Challenge ends. I'll just have to wear two pedometers that day.

Tink was the only one in last night - but the others came in, when called, at 9:30 - so lockdown was on time!

M beat me home this evening. While S and I had NoodleBox (rather than going out for dinner - and it was good we didn't because by the time I had finished with A and M it was well after 7) she had a Shepherd's (?) meal that Me had prepared - meat steamed in bread with a salad on the side. That description doesn't do it justice of course!

M had posted some photos and videos of yesterday's visit to Wet & Wild. In some of the videos you see of different theme park rides, they superimpose a black box with the word "Choice" over people's mouths so you can't lipread the single word they say over and over again - and, of course, they remove the offending words from the soundtrack as well. H wasn't using the one I used on the Velociraptor all those years ago (Choice) but he was using one. At first M thought he was saying "Cramp, cramp" because he had one ... but that wasn't quite it!