Layout changes

I've made some basic layout changes to this blog to incorporate what I think is a better design to the layout and also splash out some slideshow gadget stuff for the combined 60s party Kat and I had. Hopefully Kat won't object to these modifications - please let us know if this site is too slow with the changes!

Brief catch-up (AKA castration times)

Hi everyone (uh, I mean, mom... and that guy who stumbled on this site by accident)

Okay, so I'm back from Mozambique - what an amazing experience!! I thought I'd die, but thankfully I held out until Thursday morning before I started to contract Moz-lung (it's not that well known, but it started to spread like crazy in our team of 34). I've been out of action for about a week - still coughing now even - but life is looking good.

Will catch up on the 24 voice messages I have, and get things in order (and get used to work again, and this awful commercialised capitalist society we live in), and then try to post more information.

In brief:

1. Mozambique was awesome
2. I had a very busy Sunday night at church - counted money (very low turnout on the finances side), prepared burgers (we did a special cheese & pineapple deal this week), served coffee (we did a special hot chocolate and marshmallows deal this week), and gave a testimony in the sermon (I should be in line for a St.'hood ...)
3. Speaking of St.'hood - check out http://brattex.blogspot.com/2009/07/stefan-terblanche_16.html for the antics that a bunch of guys got up to in Mozambique. It was inevitable that we'd talk about sport, and it was inevitable that I'd bring up Stefan Terblanche, and it was madness how everyone got involved in the conversation and we came up with our very own meme! Check it out! (Rumour has it that Stefan himself will view the page soon; in the meanwhile the Sharks players are ragging him about it or something)
4. My little Max puppy (his full name is Texas Maximillion the Third; based on him being Tex, and me being Brat, so it's Brat+Tex, and his nickname is Max, and he's my third dog) is having his balls cut off at the tender age of 9 and a half! I feel so guilty and so awful, but he's had a good innings. I guess now he'll just be using his pillow to sleep on in future :-/

That's my brief update! Kat's been doing okay - been an awesome help having her around to look after me - she came back a day after I did from her stint in the 'Berg for Duncan's birthday (with the family) and she was exhausted! We're looking forward to some fun times ahead though; with me bringing back from Moz what I've learnt, and for us to start taking the next steps in our journeys through life, whatever they are!

Ciao for now!

Eeek a week apart!

Oh dear, so I see neither of us have been particularly informative of late so I'd better feel you in on latest events. So Bryan is off on the Westville Baptist Church Mozambique mission tomorrow morning early early....I'm staying at home after much confusion about whether I should be going or not. I've decided to stay as I don't have leave available and would have to take unpaid leave and there is loads of work to do in my new job. Feeling very sad though that we won't be sharing the experience together especially as it has so many momentus memories for us...first mission we went on we were broken up so you can imagine the torment, second mission we got engaged on the Costa da Sol beach, third mission we were married...the Mozzies must think we are loopy! So seeing as we love sharing experiences that grow and challenge us it's crumby that I'm not going. Anyway enough moping, am hoping that I have made a good decision and if not then I will just have to learn from it...I have already learn that I tend to jump to conclusions and worry about making decisions based on my assumptions so from now on I'm going to work on not jumping so far ahead and trying to wrestle with imagined decisions that may never need to be made...I know this probably doesn't make sense but it is my weakness to jump the gun and I need to learn to investigate all the realistic options first and go step by step.
So anyway, I'm rising early to drop Bryan off for the mission (aarghh serious lack of sleep this week) and am going to be totally lonely for the week but am also looking forward to going to bed early, organising and tidying our home (this is what I keep myself busy with when I'm lonely or bored and have had enough sleep), taking some time out for just me and keeping everyone on mission prayfully in mind.

Have loaded Bryan up with snacks and goodies for the trip seeing as they are really going rural this year and am planning big meal tonight, hopefully we get him all packed and ready so we can enjoy a relaxing evening.

Bryan is also preaching on Sunday morning after a long drive on Sat so please keep him in your thoughts and prayers...am so proud and excited for him!

Got to go do the work...bye peeps!

Withdrawal symptoms

I know a lot of you out there are desperate to know what's going on with the Johnstons, so I'm sorry for not keeping you updated.

A lot of stuff has been happening, and we'll do our best to blog about it at some point - in a nutshell:

1. Kat's 30th birthday happened
2. Kat and my 60th birthday party happened
3. I'm preparing to depart on a week-long mission to Mozambique (tomorrow) - check out my personal blog for more details

Until later, then!!

Janith + Rafael Campero - 12 months and still both alive!

Hey guys

Congratulations on making it to one year and still not having hurt each other in any nasty way :)

You own a house, you have a baby, what more could you want? What's that? Another baby??

Well done guys - we recall with great fondness that special wedding day, and I seem to have a knack of screwing up *something* whenever I MC - for your wedding it was the distinct honour of being the first friend to see Janith in her wedding dress, arriving at the chapel moments before going in, and when she said "hi Bryan", I replied with "when must they play the music?" instead of saying something gentle and reassuring, or at least complimentary :) ... ah well...

Where's all the coloured folk at?

Welcome weekend! We've missed you so!

This is the official final pre-30's Saturday and Sunday that Katherine will ever have (unless she manages to discover the trick to stopping time. Somehow spinning herself anti-clockwise every evening hasn't managed to achieve anything for her so far apart from some weird dizziness and vertigo).

In the morning we planned to take my mom to the HCA fair, but I received a sleep-disrupting phone call at 7am from her saying she was sick, so Kat and I went up at about 11am on our own.

It was really busy, but the one thing that stood out to me was the fact that it was like a whites-only Christian convention*, very similar to the Mighty Mens Conference*. It's crazy that I'd still notice that sort of thing, but it was glaringly obvious in the crowd of three or four thousand.

At any rate, it was fun to walk around and check out what was on offer. We bumped into Shane James and otherwise remained fairly anonymous. I did this game called tombola and "won" R5's worth of orange Cheetahs crocs, and Kat "won" R5's worth of SA rugby crocs (so jealous!). It was fun, but I think the people running it enjoyed it more than we did. They loved having adults participating. How it works? You use a finger (any finger) and point at a random card and then they dig up a prize from the box with the corresponding card. Tough huh?

The rest of the evening was spent watching rugby, eating fruit salad, lasagne, salad, pies, chips, and drinking fruit juice.

I highly recommend the classic strawberry mix from Woolworths!!

*obviously this was not the planners' intention

The Perfect Pizza ... Plan

Aah... Wood-fired Pizza Perfect - the perfect end to the perfect evening, resulting in me proposing to my wife, the perfect and prime plot to pig out on pizza. Permit me to provide you, dear reader, with the precise playing out of our ploy to present ourselves with a piece-meal path to partaking in a particularly regular Italian-produced meal.

What precisely is the plan, people may ask?

Primarily, the plan is to pick pizze (that's the correct Italian plural for pizza) from the list in priority, from top to bottom, one at a time. The reason? Why not! It may take us a few years, and we may never get to indulge in the entire menu, but it's a fun plan, and who knows - maybe we'll win something more than just a peculiar portion of pride from persevering with our private challenge :)

We aren't Pizza Perfect pundits by any stretch of the imaginaton, and pizza isn't in predominant provision in our premises, but in light of our desires to do memorable and exciting things, this is placed right up there with playing piano and planting potatoes!

One thing I am certain of - it certainly will lead to more peaceful picking of pizze in-store, and the precision with which we shall purchase our pastry will present the other patrons with paralysing and petrifying pressure to pick their pasta post-haste.

We don't eat much pizza normally, but this year alone we've purchased three perfect pizza meals so it may prove to be practical for our continued patronage, although we must certainly pace ourselves and prepare to pack some leftovers for work the next day. The placing of the orders is one thing, but the paying for all the pizze could reach in excess of R1,000! The pair of us will pursue this palatable challenge with vigour while also pursuing princely principals of prudence.

Please, I must place emphasis on the fact that this preliminary proposal is our intellectual property!

Some may feel that this is a peculiar and perilous (particularly pathetic) paltry pass at achieving some epithets of grandeur. I can assure those that feel this way, that we are doing this only for a bit of fun, and not any degree of over-indulgence!

To pacify all you eager readers, I'll present the progress of our peerless ploy online and include the link in an update. Please, plagiarism is not permitted and anyone purported to be poaching, will be presented to the police. Until then, please be patient while our peachy plan pans out...

PEACE!

Hannah Thomas

The homegroup snuck out of church at 19h15 to go and visit the Thomas family. Rich Erasmus was preaching something about Hebrews 10:23-25 and connecting with community or something. Then he mentioned the 8pm movie, at which point our home group got up from various spots in the church and left. Hopefully he wasn't too confused :)



We spotted the lovely mother (some sort of super diet there), proud father, and adorable daughter. Layle snapped a shot but I failed to get it. She's apparently very sweet, very healthy, very audible, very hungry - and what lovely sideburns she has! Aubrey must be proud!



That's the update for now - Hannah Thomas, welcome to God's green earth.



An sms from her loving father arrived yesterday and reads:



"Sent: May 30, 2009 09:57

Going to have to take a rain cheque on tonight due a very small girl deciding to make her grand entrance onto God's great earth today. Going to be a long day, I'll keep in touch."



Interestingly, Layle observed that Hannah is a palindrome! ...And incidentally, she WAS just born yesterday!

One of those days...

Man. What a day.

Let's see, I think the end of the story is a wonderful way to sum up how this has just been "one of those days"... Our dear tenant left one of the taps running in the flat the entire day, and at about 230pm I received a call from the chiropractor below advising me that water was coming into his section from above. Kind of sums up the day, doesn't it?

What we did today (in no particular order):

* contractors came to work to attend to our faulty LAB doors (four of them, for over two years)
* contractors left without having done anything
* plumbers came to fix my mom's faulty geyser (which had been "fixed" two weeks earlier by them)
* plumbers left my mom's place without repairing the fault in her geyser
* insurance now claimed they couldn't cover the damage because it was a new fault (?)
* Kat found a new plumber to come and repair the geyser (this guy was amazing! Mamba plumbers - Lloyd; highly recommended)
* the security guys came 2 hours early for an appointment at my mom's house so I had to leave work to attend to them at 1030am as opposed to our previously agreed 12pm appointment. Technicians were there to repair the stuff-up the previous technicians had done but blamed on "old wires"
* I again had to tell the security company we were not going to be happy to pay for a fault that wasn't there prior to the first technician (Radebe) showing up
* a dodgy red Honda Ballade ND662164 was spotted driving up and down our road
* security at guard hut up the road said the Honda was a cop car because the occupants had guns and kevlar. Some comfort.
* technicians didn't do anything, but said the alarm was a mess. They left with a promise to "report the problem" to management. Sounds familiar.
* DISCOVERY confirmed I was a member of VITALITY so Kat could migrate on as my dependant and not lose any points next week. This after I first applied May 7'ish, and again a week later, and again a week later after DISCOVERY kept losing my application.
* Kat found out that I was actually only being put on VITALITY in JULY so her points wouldn't be transferred across.
* my new BlackBerry suffers from a "white screen of death" (WSOD) and I can't use it
* I phone VITALITY who tells me I must talk to my HR. My HR says I must talk to VITALITY. Last time I phoned, VITALITY said I must do this or that, but now today's rep says do that or this.
* I phone management. She asks how I got her personal number, but still agrees to help. I'm on VITALITY for June now.
* BlackBerry WSOD again
* Soren comes to my office and has a breakdown which is ended off by him yelling "my [expletive] Friday is over". I calm him down. He then bounces out joyful for the weekend
* my firefox crashes with all my vital windows and tabs going away
* my LAB image for 210 PCs next semester, decides to break while I'm preparing it
* my virtual server gives an access violation and I can't get in
* I come home from work @ 7pm to find the school across the road is having a camp-out this weekend.

But Kat and I have a date night, and Kat is spoiling me rotten (see pictures). Aah, roll on Saturday :)

Thursday was movie night

Spontaneously, I suggested to Kat that we go and watch a movie at Waterfall Cinemas.



The Fast and the Furious. Reminds me of my rugby-playing days. No, wait, that was more like Dead Man Walking. At any rate, it's not the kind of movie I'd opt to watch, but for some bizarre reason, Kat has opted to follow up on her Marley and Me stint with ... Fast and Furious. Weird, I know - must have something to do with the aliteration or something?



It turned out to be okay! I mean, I didn't expect much, so it felt like a pretty average action movie with a pretty numbing plot. All-in-all, it was a 5/10 for me. I suppose fans of F&F series (this is the 4th instalment) might have had more reason to get excited, but I figure if it weren't for The Vin, it would have been a 3/10 or 4/10. Vin is cool, but he can't save a movie unless he's got cybernetic implants in the eyes...



For those that haven't attended a screening @ Waterfall cinemas, I highly recommend it. It's my favourite spot. I'm not a cinema purist, so a stereo audio feed and scratchy picture don't stress me out. The popcorn is to die for, and it's so NOT pretentious there :)



2 * large popcorns @ 14e

2 * tickets @ 15e

Water @ 4.50

Small slush puppie @ 8



Total = 28+30+12.50 = R70.50 for the both of us! I recommend the cinema, but not the movie.

Jimmy's Poor Effort Prawns

Okay so I haven't blogged in ages and Bryan encouraged me to do so last night and so here goes seeing as I'm not in the mood for work and am tired and just bleh.
Last night we went on a date night, it was Bryan's turn to organise and he read my mind and surprised me with a good plan for dinner up the hill to Kloof where we decided what restaurant to go to. We thought it would be a good idea to try Jimmy's Killer Prawns seeing as it would be a something new. Neither of us are big seafood eaters simply because we haven't tried it and as we love sharing new experiences we wandered inside. The restaurant was pretty nice and cozy in Kloof's old Gran & Gramps shop and the tables had little red lights you could click on when you needed service (like calling an airplane attendant) so that was a cool novelty but the rest was a bit lame. I thought we were ordering food for 2 at R100 but it turned out to be R200 (very sneaky advertising - "Create a table meal for 2 - for R100 each")! Anyway the prawns were okay and the fish was delicious but everything else was dismal. We had fun just cos it was something new and eating with one's fingers is great but it was rather like getting lower level takeaway. I was disappointed with the food and Bryan didn't feel great today after eating everything beside the prawns which I scoffed :P Anyway the american girl I work with (Jessica) has recommended the restaurant Fish at Umhlanga so I think we should give seafood another chance there and then if we still don't like it we know we are just not seafood eaters or at the very least only when it's fresh out the sea and straight on the braai. Nice evening though for just the two of us...and I really like the fact that it's perfectly acceptable to tuck in with no cutlery!
Especially good news is that I got a Woolies chocolate mousse from the petrol station near Westwood on our way home (cheaper than ordering pudding) and they now have Mint Caramel ones too!!

Okay so this isn't the most exciting blog...sorry I've been typing it over about a 2 hour gap on and off whilst helping Jessica hunt for a new home and discussing the advantages of her running yoga lesson so I have no idea anymore if it makes sense and I just can't be bothered to check - it's a Friday people!!! Will makeup for the poor effort prawn blog by writing next time about my new job.

Have a great weekend y'all!

My name's BrYan, and I'm a good listener

Today is the day I finally heed the advice of several doctors and go and get the wax cleaned out of my ears.



Apparently my hearing is poor because I've got excess wax build-up in my ears and that's why I don't often seem to listen and do what I'm told (marriage!).



I used to think it was because my esteemed former employer (SA Coaters) didn't supply protective gear for my ears when I was in the factory (which is still true - thanks Ralph Streitbürger and Willem Fourie) but this is probably exacerbated by the wax.



The waiting room appreciates my humour - I wrote marital status as "married (happily)" and they all found it rather charming. I asked for a discount for entertaining them, and they laughed again. I'm just that good.



So here I am to have my wax flushed out - it's gonna be wicked (get it? WICK-ed).



I'll let you all know how it goes on my personal blog (if anyone cares to read the details) @ http://brattex.blogspot.com/2009/05/wax-on-wax-off-wax-in-wax-out.html.

Youtube videos are online

For those that may be interested in checking out a youtube posting of a video I shot for the church (for my atheist friends, get over the religious aspect and check it out anyway, because IMHO it's entertaining and a job well done considering I shot it and edited it in two days under time pressure), go over to this post on my personal blog and follow the links!

Oh, and feel free to comment on the video or whatever too... there are a few "tricks of the trade" I had to incorporate, and some frustrating continuity errors, but no-one should notice them in one viewing. Also, I ran out of battery as we finished the last shot on the video, so how's that for timing?

Hoky is a bit croky

1979 on Star Wars Day (May the fourth be with you) Chris Hockaday was born. Now he's hit 30 and he's no longer a hoky religion - he's a croky one!!

Pity he's more of a Trekkie than a Star Warsian fan, but we still love him :)

Happy birthday Chris!!

Justin Jones + Bronwyn Ellis = wedding!

Today is their big day!

Jones is in the fast lane! Bronwyn's keeping up!

It's a glorious occassion!

Photographs etc. to follow :)