Well, the holidays came and went. I was fortunate this year to take three weeks over the Christmas New Year period. I had a week off before Christmas, the major break, and then the first week of the new year.
I had decided well in advance that the first fortnight (Christmas aside) would be for catch ups and chores. For months now, the state of our house has bugged me. Outstanding tasks leered at me from across the room. Piles of paperwork taunted me as the lay untouched. My state of fitness declined as a sat on the couch and ate chips. And that iMac we bought was still not completely set up, because all my images were scattered around the hard drives of a 5 year old PC.
And I am pleased to say that I ticked a lot of things off my list. Over the first few weeks, I plastered and repainted 2 bathrooms and a laundry. I re-stained the outdoor deck with two coats of oil. I spent about 5 days tidying up my image archive and moving it to a new, clean workflow. I sorted out paperwork and did the accounts for my wife. I hung Christmas lights. I even swam 3 times a week and took a break from strong coffee. I didn’t get through everything, but I made a big dent in the backlog.
The last week was the proper holiday week. I promised the kids and Lou that we would spend the whole week doing fun stuff and ignoring chores – a holiday at home, you might.
So over the week we spent a lot of time visiting friends, do things with the kids, and generally chilling out. The images here are from a day out at Puffing Billy. Having a son with an obsession for trains makes this regular trip, but it’s hard to get tired of the quaint old rattler.
Very nice Shane – and good to see you getting back in to the fitness side of things!