Over the last cou­ple of days I’ve been play­ing around with a new design for the site. I know I’ve talked about this in the past, but noth­ing really pro­gressed past the ini­tial sketch phase.

Here’s what I’m think­ing it’ll look like (click for a big­ger image):

Here’s what still needs to be done:

• *some­thing* in the left-hand side of the header.
• menus aligned properly
• a con­trast­ing colour placed through the design. I’ve been rec­om­mended both green and orange, but I’m think­ing black might be a bet­ter choice .

I’ve been show­ing it to a few peo­ple and I’ve already had a stack of feed­back on it. More would be wel­come though.

Expect the design up and run­ning in the next week or so. Depend­ing on work load and laziness.

Six weeks.

That’s how long it took to get all our fur­ni­ture deliv­ered to the house. Then on top of that there were the untold hours I spent putting the damn things together. But at least it’s done. It’s over. We have a fully func­tion­ing house­hold. We’re no longer squat­ting on the liv­ing floor like vagrants, bal­anc­ing plates on crossed knees while we watch a TV bal­anced pre­car­i­ously on a stand.

I came away from the expe­ri­ence hav­ing learned a few things: how to fol­low poorly laid out instruc­tions, that rub­ber mal­lets can fix any­thing and of course that those around you can be injured when not even in the vicin­ity of your pri­mary work area.

You see, while I was putting the TV cab­i­net together last week­end Ange was run­ning around the house get­ting ready for a baby shower. She leaped over a pile of card­board and came down on a pair of scis­sors I had lying on the floor. The scis­sors went straight into the web­bing between her toes and made a nice hole. I was told, quite firmly, that she has lost feel­ing in her lit­tle toe, so I jumped on the phone and started dial­ing. A few phone calls later I dis­cov­ered that all the med­ical clin­ics around us closed up shop on Sun­days. Very helpful.

We got in the car and headed to the next best thing: the local phar­macy. Once there I got Ange to show the guy the dam­age. A look of dis­ap­pointed crept over his face as he said “Oh, is that it?” I’m not sure what he expected, maybe he imag­ined we’d be reen­act­ing scenes from Hos­tel or some­thing. We’ll never know for sure, because he handed us a bot­tle of anti-septic and told us dab it on every now and then. No stitches necessary.

When we first moved into the new house, mum noticed that we had a rose­mary plant grow­ing in the back gar­den This “gar­den” is lit­tle more than a sparse, bark-covered out­line that runs along the edge of the court­yard. At most there’s ten plants break­ing up . It seems unusual to me that the land­lord would decide that one of those plants had to be a herb of all things. I could haz­ard a guess and say that your com­mon rose­mary plant is very hardy and will sur­vive just about any­thing. Of course it’s not out of the realm of pos­si­bil­ity that they can also be used to ward off evil.

Hav­ing that plant nearby has inspired me to grow my own food. It’d be a handy skill to have if human­ity is ever brought to the brink of extinc­tion by zom­bie apoc­a­lypse. That and fresh food just tastes that much bet­ter than your store bought variety.

Of course, I’m not what you’d call a green­thumb. Sure, oper­at­ing a water­ing can falls safely into my com­fort zone, but any­thing more advanced than that has been met with fail­ure. Hell, a few years ago I even for­got to plant the seeds when attempt­ing to grow chilli plants.

I’m hop­ing I have all that out of my sys­tem by now. I’m due.
Ange and I were out at Bun­nings last Mon­day and thought it would be a good idea to try and cul­ti­vate more herbs, to go along with the rose­mary plant. After some hefty deci­sion mak­ing, we walked out with four plants: Basil, Oregano, Ital­ian Pars­ley and a Bay Tree. I then spent that after­noon repot­ting them and, after a short detour to clean pot­ting mix out of my car, stood watch­ing like some proud par­ent as my herba­ceous chil­dren took root.

Hav­ing no TV in the house is cer­tainly an inter­est­ing way to live, but after a while you begin to feel that loss of con­nec­tion to the out­side world. No mat­ter how many mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers you read there’s always that nag­ging feel­ing that some­thing is missing.

I took steps on Sat­ur­day to mend that dis­con­nect. After track­ing down Ange’s Dad in Brunswick, I drove both of us out to JB HiFi to pay off and pick up the new TV. After get­ting home and unpack­ing it, I dis­cov­ered that we’d been sold a dud. The image on the screen, while crys­tal clear, flashed like some giant strobe light at a rave. I must admit I was impressed with the qual­ity of the image, even if it was only there for half a sec­ond at a time.

A quick call to JB HiFi and a trip back to the store resulted in a brand new card­board box, com­plete with brand new TV inside, being wheeled out to us. I also picked up a com­po­nent cable for the Wii while I was there. After all, what’s the use in hav­ing a new flashy TV if you can’t show it off?

We’re still wait­ing for some other furniture-type things to arrive. TV cab­i­net, cof­fee table, din­ing table (with chairs) and a couch. The TV cab­i­net and cof­fee table have been delayed two weeks. Lucky for us, Ange’s par­ents have donated a small cab­i­net to perch the screen on in the meantime.

While we’re wait­ing for the couch and din­ing table we’ve got two bean­bags stand­ing in for both. We’d orig­i­nally been quoted six weeks for deliv­ery for both items, so with any luck they’ll arrive around the same time as the cof­fee table and cab­i­net. And then we’re basi­cally done.

Apart from these lit­tle hur­dles we’re set­tling into the house quite nicely.