New Year's Eve 2009

Its New Year's Eve and I am waiting to go out at 8.45pm to a party. Its a long time since we went out at this time of night. Hope we can stay awake until the end. Peter and Dillis from our Monday night euchre group rang us the other day and asked us to their place where they are having a gathering.


Well only a few hours until the end of this year. I can't believe it is 11 months since I retired. I have accomplished a few things I wanted to do......... volunteer work, going to New Zealand, some tidying up, finishing a long outstanding jigsaw puzzle and throwing a lot of things out. The getting rid of things will continue the beginning of next year. When I was a child the days seemed to be never ending or maybe it was because I never thought about time then.

It was lovely having Melissa for Christmas even though it was only for a short time. Melissa also discovered the M2 bus and was very happy with the service. Hope you enjoyed your stay Missy as much as I enjoyed you here.

I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year and hope you have health and very exciting things happen to you in 2010.

Until next year...........................

On the buses

I have been blog less for some time now so I thought I would make an effort.

Last Saturday I decided to take the M2 bus into the city as I was meeting Kerry-Ann at the Opera House to see the ballet. When I got on the bus it was standing room only and this lady, whose little boy about 10 years of age was sitting next to her, said she would put her son on her lap and I could sit down. She said she didn't want her son to stand up as he was performing today and might get tired out. I asked where he was performing and she said at the Opera house in the ballet The Sleeping Beauty. What a coincidence I said, I am going to see that Ballet. Apparently he has been dancing for about 2 years and was chosen to work with the Australian Ballet. He was only of the rats in this particularly ballet and his mother told me what to look out for as he was dressed in five layers of costume and I wouldn't recognise him. We continued talking all the way into the city and I found out that she owns 2 of the Harvey World Travel agency, one at Blacktown and one at Seven Hills. I told her we go to the one at Winston Hills and she new all the people there. Also her other son has just started at Oakhill College so we had much to talk about.

This is the second interesting person I have met on my bus travels. The other one was a young girl backpacker. It started by her asking at the bus stop at QVB if this is where you get the hills bus and we happened to sit near her on the bus. I said she looked tired had she been doing a lot of travelling. It turned out she was from Germany and was staying in Canberra at a friend's house for 2 weeks who she met back home and the friend had returned the invitation to stay with them in Canberra. The last week she had been sightseeing around Sydney and in another week was heading off to New Zealand on a year long working holiday there. She showed me her diary and all the pictures and people she had met and as we left the bus she was writing in it and I couldn't help wondering if she was writing about us. We found out also that she was a house painter so Tony was able to discuss some aspects of painting with her.

Winston Hills Mall now has boom gates. This is to stop business people parking all day in there and catching the M2 bus to work. It is also to make sure that there is traffic congestion all around and that it takes some time to now enter the carpark and exit. I was in the line the other day waiting to collect a ticket to open the gate. As you do when you are waiting in a long line you daydream. Well not thinking I just followed the previous car in and the boom gate came down on me. Luckily when it touched it went up again. I was so embarrassed that I just drove in and I didn't have a ticket to get out again. I was in luck again because for the first 3 hours the out gates stay up. CCTV surveillance system probably has my number plate and think what a silly woman.

Not long now for Christmas. Sydney is looking forward to Melissa arriving and have even put up a Christmas Tree in Martin Place for her.

I will be going to RE Tebbut Lodge's residents Christmas Party on Friday lunchtime.

When I was at North Rocks today I ran into one of the residents, Ada, who had come on the bus with some other residents and my boss, Shirlee. Ada said that she had just brought me a Christmas present and proceeded to take out of packet of TimTams. I said are these to share with the other staff but she said they are all for you.