NINE WEEKS TO GO!!

The old adage "time flies" certainly is frighteningly true! I can't wait to meet my little girl, but at the same time I don't feel anywhere near ready to be an awesome dad (look at the pictures on the left to get my drift)!

63 more days until Friday, 31 December 2010.

Also, I noticed last week I made a funny - "final stretch". Haha, funny for me, not funny for Kat :(

TEN WEEKS TO GO!!

As of today there are officially TEN WEEKS to go until the Expected Due Date (EDD) of our little baby.

In other words; 70 days until Friday, 31 December 2010.

I suppose one could say the final stretch has commenced!

We can see clearly now...

... The trees are gone!

It's been a while since we've made any updates to this blog, and it's mostly because we've just been so busy!

Kat and I woke up early to the noise of chainsaws across the road. The school has decided to cut the loose (and shady) branches down, so now we have more sun, more heat, and more light. I did wonder this AM if perhaps Steve was on his bike again but luckily for him, it wasn't his fault I was woken up so early - this time :)

I suspect soon we will open our blog up again (ie. PUBLIC) and then we'll enjoy more activity. I suspect the idiots we were being harassed by have now moved on to greater exploits and other poor souls, so hopefully we've seen (and heard) the last of them... That is, apart from my dealings with them on the property front, where one hopes we can get all the disastrous heartache resolved, one way or the other, through the court-appointed administrator (next Friday is the appearance date)!

WHAT were we thinking??

Often there are moments in life that at the time seem so naturally innocent and hold no potential for problems or misunderstandings, but when looking back on those moments (usually with the benefit not only of hindsight but additional or alternative perspectives) we can see just how crazy we were and how close we actually came to being in some sort of trouble.

While revisiting some of our USA holiday pictures, I came across a couple that immediately upon first glance made me think of something a little deviant from the original "momentary context" of the pictures. 

When you look at these pictures, keep in mind our momentary context - it was freezing cold (like below zero), we were tired and excited tourists, and we were in the USA's capitol. What we forgot at the time was that fewer than two weeks earlier an attempted Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist tried to destroy a commercial passenger aircraft and subsequently the nation's DHS was on high alert. 

I'm quite surprised that we didn't land up in any trouble at the time, or at the very least, get some strange enquiries from the security forces around the capitol, but the pictures below reveal how suspicious we must have looked at the time...

Infiltrating Washington DC with our "gear".

Bryan-balah and Kat-zbalah in front of one of their targets, the Washington Monument.

(note the backpack with "gear" strapped over my right shoulder)

We saved the rabbit

Big news all ("new") Johnston fans! If we were living in the 1920's or 1930's and I proclaimed the words "The Rabbit Died", everyone would almost certainly understand what is going on in our lives. You see, back in those days there was a "Rabbit test" to test for certain conditions - take the lady's urine, inject it in some poor unsuspecting rabbit, and then cut the rabbit open and see what happened inside. The results would either indicate a positive or a negative result. 

Thankfully, our conscience is clear: modern medicine and advances in technology have empowered us to perform this test another, far less murderous way. In other words, we have still found out the same information, but we saved the rabbit. 

Oh yes: the result is positive.

Truth be told, we knew this information back around 17 April 2010, but Kat didn't want to spread the word until we had more clarity on things (apparently it's quite common amongst ladies). Well, when we finally obtained confirmation (and made it "out of the woods") a whole lot of extra stuff happened, and we've only slowly managed to recover from all of that - I'll certainly be posting more information as time goes on, but for now this post should actually have landed around 17 April 2010, so it's very late. Sorry!

Midlands getaway

We're here! Bacon Vleis, or as they call it, Beacons Vlei.

Really nice. We're in the cheaper B&B room, but no-one else is here so it's pretty much our house :)

We score cheaper rooms WITH breakfast so we can now use the savings to buy dinner :)

New blog layout

Bryan here. I've just made a template update to the blog; hopefully the new blogger template editor will inspire Kat to finally get more hands-on with the blog, but for now, I've been doodling. What do you think? :)

The old blog looked like this:

Which do you prefer?

Fifa World Cup, Westville Baptist Style

Lots of noise - vuvuzela's etc. and a few flags and face paintings and shirts the wrong way, but all in all - good effort :)

Music in the Hills 2010

It strikes me as quite strange that the first time I've actually really come to appreciate our beautiful South African (specifically, Durban) winters is when I've lived here for more than three decades. Wow they're wonderful! Nice clear skies, sunny, but not sweltering - just warm and crisp. Really wonderful! Maybe my stint in sub zero temperatures over Christmas have helped me to appreciate home more - who knows!

This Sunday past, Kat and I decided to take my mom out for a special picnic and art exhibition in Makaranga Gardens - the event was called MUSIC IN THE HILLS, and yes, there was music too!

At R80 per person it wasn't cheap, but we had a grand time (nice and sunny) and were treated to quality Philharmonics including James Bond medleys, Pirates of the Caribbean medleys, and the obligatory Superman and Pink Panther themes. I even managed to squeeze in a nap :)

Happy birthday PACMAN!!

[UPDATE: go to http://www.google.com/pacman/ to continue the madness]

Wow. What a neat surprise!
www.google.com is celebrating Pacman's 30th birthday and what better way to celebrate it than to play two player Pacman & Pacgirl with my favorite gal?
Thanks Al for the tip :)

The luxuries of location!

While driving along a road pretty much adjacent to the one we're staying on (or rather, within close proximity to it), we discovered this little convenience whose usefulness has probably been lost to most of the current generation - the little marvel of a day mostly gone by; a posting box!

No sooner had we discovered this luxury of our location, that I put it to good use. Shamefully I confess I am not sure if I included the correct postage stamps, but I am hopeful it all worked out!

Update on our lives

It appears that some people may not know the entirely current status of our lives, so here's a brief update to get people "up to some level of speed" with the (new) Johnstons:

• We own a flat (well, we own about 25% of it, and ABSA the other 75%)* in Westville
• I am presently the re-elected chairman of the trustees for this mixed commercial / residential complex
• Some guy from Israel and a few other wallies have made life in the complex a veritable hell for the other (and only honest) owners
• Amongst other things, property has essentially been taken and sold without our permission, rules have been broken (not minor things either, but rather serious things that are causing the residential units to lose real estate value or any potential rental income they may derive because no-one wants to live in the flats any more thanks to the unhappy climate and conditions), electricity has been illegally tapped off for the Thai restaurant (I better not mention the name... what's the capital of Thailand and what do you thwow at a wabbit?), our communal water supply is being used to drive the commercial ventures (and laundromats and restaurants use a lot of water, let's be honest), people ram gates when they refuse to sign for a remote control, and I've been threatened several times and assaulted because I am the chairman representing the Body Corporate in a High Court battle against the transgressors. 
• * The Thai restaurant and the Israeli oke own a portion now too, since they took some of it :-/

Blogs gone private

Well it's been a long time since our last post to this blog: sadly, it's been two months of silence and the main reason for this has been that a very sorry group of people have found it worth their while and  (apparently limitless time) to scour through our blogs and extract any tidbits of information that they can use to harass us and generally just cause headaches. Yes, these people are connected to our High Court case, so it's no surprise that they've resorted to this nefarious (and based on the logs indicating their time spent on the site and their browsing habits, also desperately sad) approach in order to somehow "gain the upper hand". In order to err on the side of caution, we've had to take our blogs "off the grid" for the time being, but rather than keep you all in the dark, and because of popular demand, we've opened it up to a select list of readers (you should feel honoured that you made the cut!).

Don't expect much coming from us at the moment anyway, because we've been so used to NOT posting news that it's going to require some changes of habit, and also Kat and I are both presently desperately sick, so we're not really in the mood right now :)

A lot has happened in the past two months, and hopefully over the course of the next several weeks we'll be able to catch those that care back up to speed!

Life :)

Aaah. What bliss! A peaceful trip down the coast and a welcome break from all the muck of the past week+ ...

Good friends, good rest, good food, good times!

And of course, I got to enjoy pretty much all of the Super 14 rugby action, and Kat / Steve had their fair share of RomCom's, and we indulged in a good night out (dinner & a movie) - The Book of Eli is as how I predicted it would be; Mad Max with a biblical twist (I'd give it a 6 out of 10... But that's a story for another time).

The verse for the weekend; Rom 12:1-4 ... Do not conform to the pattern of this world... renew your mind!!

What temptation it is to sell our flat and buy a beach house...

Peace out!

Twelve minutes means mighty fine

What started off as a lovely sunny day out together at Umhlanga beach has turned into a rather expensive excursion for us!
For the record, this is Kat's responsibility, not mine :) ... This had better not be coming out of my birthday budget!