Saturday 22 February

l stayed up way too late last night watching the Sochi Winter Olympics. That's now coming through as a very common theme - and the only (almost) good thing is that tomorrow is the last day of competition. If there's no competition, the more likely I am not to watch it - although I have enjoyed the captions immensely and my favourite is still ''The Blade of Escape"!

Sooz and I went to breakfast at Nerang this morning. There was no Deep Water Running for her today as M was up and out and on her way early to collect The Russians for their transfer to the airport. It seems like only a moment ago that they arrived-and before that when we were saying "The Russians Are Coming" and now they are gone. They had a good time though - and managed many trips to the beach to swim. That was on the top of their list for the holidays.

It was warm for them while they were here - and Sooz and Pearl took the heat in their stride - especially yesterday when they locked themselves in M's room with the air-conditioner blasting the equivalent of cold Artic air. The cold does appear to have helped Pearl - she isn't nearly as puffy as she was before the chill-out session.

After dropping the Russians at the airport in Brisbane, M was back in time to join us for a coffee at breakfast before she and Sooz went off to do some shopping.

I spent the afternoon doing my homework - my resume revamp. The deal was that if I got "enough" done, Sooz and I would go into The Big House for afternoon tea and a break as my reward. Once we knew about Mouse's dinner invitation we deferred TBH plan and decided to go another day. (Sooz had made a curry at home this afternoon which will now become dinner tomorrow night.)

I was surprised when Prince greeted us at Olga's door - but if I'd thought about it, I would have realised that with Mi and Az away in Adelaide for the weekend, of course it meant that Mouse would be on Prince Patrol. It also explains how the Russians came into contact with Prince, so Prince could bite Kirill's finger. It had me puzzled for a while!

The good news is that even though I hadn't checked my calendar, I did remember it was Mum's birthday. It was just a shame that I didn't remember that yesterday was Tr's birthday! I'm not sure how that slipped off my calendar but I can see that I now have a job checking that other birthdays haven't done the same.