Getting on top of these catch-up posts now the other really cool thing that has happened is that I am now officially a web designer..

Not that I wasn’t before. I certainly have experience and a knowledge of what I am doing. I have clients who are paying me to build their online presence. What I was lacking was the piece of paper.

It’s fair to say that I have done quite a bit of study but the qualification that I originally started in 2001 ended up getting depreciated so I had to start doing things again.

The college where I did my studies did a lot to help me with the course. The allowed me to study part time during the full time stream (Central TAFE in Perth city refused to do that for me saying it was not possible) and when they told me that the current version of the course I was doing was ending last year, they helped me to complete the units that I had not completed by applying prior learning to the missing modules.

I had to pay to enroll in all the classes but then all I had to do was to research the learning outcomes required by each module and justify in writing that I had achieved all the requirements and so at the start of the year my results came back with everything marked as competent.

A few weeks ago I put in the application for award form and last Thursday I got my certificate in the mail

Blue – Laser Etched Dragon Light

My daughter has an obsession with dragons. This is the latest addition to her collection

That I have been tardy again in postings. It’s not for lack of things to blog about either simply a time issue.

In the last couple of weeks I have had two clients wanting updates to their sites, one client who I spoke to about six weeks ago finally come to me with graphics (and a beginning of July deadline) and three people looking for new web sites.

I’ve managed to get quite a bit done with the updates and design of two of the four new sites and so I feel that I can take a break for a short while.

I’ve had some good things happen and one kind of difficult thing happen. I’ll start with the latter because, while annoying it was resolved and there is no point in dwelling on it.

Last weekend work organised a Go-Karting and staff meeting on Sunday morning. I was cursing that it could have been next weekend when I don’t have either children but I figured that I would take everyone along so that we could at least spend some time together.

On Thursday night while I was at work I got an SMS from Amanda telling me that James had a party to go to on Sunday at 11.30am and she would pick him up. It really irritates me when she just assumes that she can make plans for the kids on the limited time that I have with them but despite that I usually end up just complying with what she wants and she rarely knows this.

I decided that I was not going to accept it this time although mostly because it was going to be too disruptive to the plans that we already made so I messaged her back telling her we already had plans.

She messaged me back saying “fine you can tell him he cant go”, which I found incredibly rude seeing as she shouldn’t be telling him he can go and just assuming that I had no plans and then leaving it to ME to fix, in effect making me to be the bad guy

Later she suggested swapping weekends which was something I had already thought about a couple of weeks prior to sort out the staff meeting problem. Unfortunately the reason why I had not done so was because the kids had a party on Saturday. She also told me that the party was for Jennifer who is Jamie’s best friend which did change my attitude to his going.

I’d already talked to mum about it and was going to give James the option of going to the party or coming with us but as soon as I found out who’s party it was I knew that he had to go so on Sunday morning we dropped him off at my mothers and continued on with what we were doing.

I collected him afterwards and we went to the park for a while before heading home.

I had a few ideas on where I wanted to go with this weeks Thursday Challenge but in the end I decided it was a great excuse to head for the kitchen and make up a batch of choc chip cookies.

Mmmmm cookies! 

To attack the persistent algae problem in my aquarium I decided to invest in a couple of Catfish. The guy at the aquarium store suggested that I should get about five or six for the size of tank that I have but due to the cost of them I got two with the aim to get more later.

I was given a pair, one male and one female and the guy at the shop explained how to tell them apart. It’s good when there are big differences between genders.

The male seems to have a preference for hiding in one of the ceramic ornaments at the bottom of the tank which, seeing as it’s probably got a fair amount of food in there for him, is not surprising. The female however ended up moving into the weeds after a day or so and that’s where she stayed for a week or so.

Lia thought she was dead and while it did look that way, I had already checked and knew that she wasn’t. I had a vague hope that she was hiding in the weeds for a completely different reason and after a week it became clear that my thoughts were a reality with the discovery of a very tiny little Catfish .

There are at least six little fish in there and they are starting to come out of their hiding spot in the weeds.

Little Catfish – The gravel at the bottom of the aquarium is very small stone which gives an idea of scale.

Well, seeing as I drive a V6 SUV, that’s hardly likely but this week has been the first week in many many years that a tank of petrol has lasted me more than a week.

Having been a postal contractor for so long I got used to fueling up every two to three days depending on how busy I was. Changing jobs made an impact to that meaning that I fueled up less often but as my drive to work is around a 65km round trip it still meant that I was filling up every 6 to 7 days.

I took the car into my mechanic a couple of weeks back for it’s first service and he suggested that I should start using premium unleaded instead of standard, which I used to do in my Subaru several cars back.

With that car I had noticed that there was an increase in fuel economy but when I sold it to by the work van I stopped using it because it didn’t make any difference.

Well, I am back on the PULP and let me tell you. I fueled up the car last Tuesday and now, eight days later the trip computer is telling me I still have about 120km of travel left to go.

On the downside, the fuel price has gone up again so it’s now costing me nearly $100 to fill up the tank.