Karmic Challenge Week 15 or is it 16 already??? I’m really not sure…

I absolutely HATE the mosquito… Almost as much as the tax department

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

The Great continuing Karmic Challenge

Only 5 months to go Rose, just 5 months, I’d tell you the days left, but I’ll save my accounting skills as who really cares? The game is about Karma not counting I think.

Now my apologies from the start, my prosaic and mundane writing style is not a patch on my good friend Rose’s contributions. But suck it up, I have the keyboard and I’m here writing it, so too bad!

It has been a difficult few weeks to keep up the Karmic reporting pace that has been maintained by the highly creative Rose and me her number crunching sidekick. What with trips to the snow fields, then to the sunshine coast, new challenging jobs to do (in Rose’s case). Well it has not been great, and there are other recent events that have distracted Rose, so I thought I’d do a post just, because, well just because…

Now since I have been distracted, and I have not really keeping an eye on things, I thought I might just summarise  just the highlights, or at least the one’s I know about or can remember. Rose you can always correct me, and I know that you will be!

The Capt. and Karma Weeks 14 to 15

Now you might notice that I left of week 16, that’s because Rose and I haven’t really had a chance to compare notes, but accuracy in Karmic Counting has never been my strongest suit.

So how did I do over the last few weeks? Where do I start?

1. The Noah’s Ark Expedition to the non-Sunshine Coast
   

   Well you can read the whole sorry story at my post Karma and a week lost in a very wet paradise. It explains how lovely and warm it was(n’t) up on the Sunshine Coast. So for enduring near arctic conditions and bringing smiles to my kids, or at least entertaining them and giving them heaps of cuddles, I think I deserve a few points.

   How does 25 Points sound?
   

   
   

   Here is me with Miss J (excuse her bottom), Mr J (tank engine in hand) and Mr B, all loving the beach. Mind you it was raining, blowing a gale, and the beach was actually closed for surfing, but my family (and Rose) we are made of tougher stuff.

2. The Great Cat Visitation and Feeding event
   

   Now Rose has befriended this rather bohemian woman, who has from what I can gather, an addiction to helping poor little lost pussies. Rose has been making regularly pilgrimages to visit this cat lady, and taking food for her many many cute pussy cats.

   I have been talking about getting a cat for some time now. Finally the other week the body corporate, those devils that set the rules for the block of units I live in, well finally they relented and grudgingly gave me permission to have my own pussy. Rose just wasn’t able to make her regular visit last week, so little old me took the meat to the cat lady.

   I nearly ran over a cat as I drove up the driveway, then as I entered the house several cats tried to make a break for it. But actually, eccentric as she is, this cat lady seems to have a heart of gold, and a lack of a functioning old factory sense (her house stinks just a bit).

   So I gave the meat to her, with Rose’s apologies, and I also made friends with I don’t know how many cats. My next visit will be to select my own pussy, thanks Rose for setting this up (or is that setting me up).

   Maybe 25 points?
   

   

   A selection of cute pussy cats, I’ll post a picture of mine when I finally get it settled into my place

3. Donations, Donations, oh wonderful Tax Deductible Donations
   

   I am slowly, month by month, contributing to the education of some anonymous child, via the Smith Family. So at around $40 a month, I think I should get not only a tax deduction, but carbon credits and maybe a few Karma points too.

   

   You too can help the Smith Family by visiting their website and making a donation directly at http://www.thesmithfamily.com.au/site/page.cfm, or if you are in Australia, do it in the flesh.

   25 Points

So What about Rose’s Weeks 14 to 15?

1. Yes, Rose was also part of the Noah’s Ark Expedition
   

   Well I’d have to that I really appreciated Rose coming along to the, formerly known as, Sunshine Coast. Yep it rained almost non-stop, and my kids kept on wanting to go into the pool. Rose is NOT a big fan of the cold, and the so-called ‘heated’ pool, was not exactly warm. Now she did spend quite a bit of time in the heated spa pool, actually almost all the time she could. But when required she bravely went where her body told her not to go, and for that I really appreciated it, as I did with her assistance she gave freely for the entire week with my kids. You were fantastic Rose xxx

   100 Points
   

   
   

   There is the intrepid polar explorer Rose, with Miss J and Mr B, freezing her tits off, I know cause I’d just jumped out of the pool to take the photo 

2. But Capt. It was my food that you took to the Great Cat Visitation!
   

   Yep I think you deserve a bucket load for supporting this lovely lady and her cat infestation. Especially kind giving meat, when you can’t stand the stuff really. Plus pointing me in the right direction, yep thanks to Rose I will soon have my very own pussy cat, and from the same lovely cat lady, she is a bit strange, but I’ve grown accustomed to eccentricity, you see I know you Rose, my very bestie, and well what more can I say J

   10 Points
   

   
   

   This is how NOT to feed a cat, yep you can’t trust an ex-president…

3. The failure to deliver, NO slamming for me… 

   Well Rose got me all worked up and ready to be totally slammed into the jaws of a lubricious local poetesses at a monthly Poetry Slam. I was all primed, had memorised my best lines, by the way she had planned this event, not me. I would have been happy just going down to the local to hear a band, or even just sitting and chatting sitting on soft sand. But Rose, who writes some incredible prose, decided that poetry would be where to pose, that eternal question, of life and the rest, your place or mine? Yes my ultimate test!

   But Rose did not satisfy, my ultimate need, my eternal quest, instead she chose sniffles, and her own sick-bed, and left me a little miffled… Maybe it’s lucky she DIDN’T take me to the poetry slam…

   No Points for Rose, just a bad case of the Flu
   

   
   

   Here is what we missed out on Rose, the worrying part for me is, no sexy Poetess’s anywhere in sight

4. Rose and her wonderful mum
   

   I can’t say too much here, as really Rose has said it all in her post Farewell to the loveliest of mothers. My heart went out to Rose, and for her lovely writing and thoughts about her mum, well I really can’t count the number of points you truly deserve, but as a small token, here is my tally for you.

   200 Points
   

   

So what is the tally up to week 15?

		Rose		The Capt.
Week No.	Week Ending	Rose’s Weekly Tally	Rose’s Running Total	Capt’s Weekly Tally	Capt’s Running Total
0	21/03/2012	0	0	-7	-7
1	28/03/2012	12	12	13	6
2	4/04/2012	15	27	18	24
3	11/04/2012	10	37	11	35
4	18/04/2012	10	47	11	46
5	25/04/2012	4	51	-3	43
6	2/05/2012	15	66	12	55
7	9/05/2012	10	76	10	65
8	16/05/2012	50	126	10	75
9	23/05/2012	20	146	0	75
10	30/05/2012	5	151	15	90
11	6/06/2012	10	161	10	100
12	13/06/2012	0	161	10	110
13	20/06/2012	20	181	20	130
14	27/06/2012	100	206	25	155
15	4/07/2012	210	416	50	205
16	11/07/2012	???	???	???	???

Your comments and abuse is will be appreciated and/or ignored depending on whether it is the former or the latter.

Capt. Savage

(Slowing slipping further behind the Karmic excellence that is Rose)

Karma and a week lost in a very wet paradise

What Noosa Main Beach is supposed to look like…

In search of Karma on the Sunshine Coast with my kids and the master Karma Collector Rose

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

I have just come back from a very wet week at what normally is a beach paradise, namely the Sunshine Coast of Queensland. Every 3 months I make a pilgrimage up to visit my kids who now live in Queensland with my ex-wife. Generally it’s a pleasant trip, with warm or hot days, lots of time spent at the beach, it’s quite simply a week usually spent in paradise.

So you get used to believing the advertising campaigns, where Queensland is described as ‘beautiful one day and perfect the next’, I went through this in my last post ‘good weather for ducks‘, so I won’t go back over old ground. But my last post was on the Tuesday of last week. Well it didn’t really stop raining until I pack everything up and drove my kids back to their mother’s place on Friday.

However regardless of the weather my kids had heaps of fun, as did I, and I believe so did Rose too (with the kids anyway). Also being stuck inside gave me plenty of chances to practice my new vice, namely playing the guitar, or at least torturing others while I practice.

Jade ‘enjoying’ my guitar playing

So how about Karma Capt?

Well I have to admit I felt like I was collecting Karma by the bucket load with the smiles coming from the kids, mostly Miss J who simply loved jumping in the water, mostly the heated spa however, Mr B is made of stronger stuff and stoically insisted in jumping into the pool. Now this was supposed to be a heated pool, but I think that as in my previous post the heating was simply there to melt the larger icebergs.

But the one who deserves all of the Karma is Rose. While she mostly avoided the pool whenever possible, she definitely is not in the slightest bit Eskimo, she did force a smile and put up with most of everything my kids chucked at her. Only on one or two occasions did she have to escape, one of those was her epic expedition to Noosa Heads (walking), but I think that she may actually have been escaping me and my damn guitar.

She also gave up a week with her kids, her animals, and even (god forbid) blogging mostly… She was starting to be a bit strung out by the end of the week, like a drug addict going cold turkey. And I must also mention that for almost the whole week before our epic trip she had the worst case of Lurgi, and was still swallowing buckets of antibiotics and generally rattling round like a pill bottle when we drove up to Queensland.

SO A BIG THANK YOU TO YOU ROSE – Maybe 100 Points… what do you think.

Rose and Miss J in the heated spa… where was I, well with the polar bears in the pool with my eskimo son Mr B…

For me, well I think I deserve some points, but they are my kids, so I suppose being nice to them isn’t too much of an effort.

And I should get some points for giving my ex-wife a kid free week to spend surrounded by washing and the other bi-products of having 3 kids to look after. I’m imagining her crumpled in a corner breathing heavy sighs of relief and perhaps slipping off for a quick massage somewhere, or god forbid getting a sleep-in.

So maybe I could get 25 points for spending the week with them?

This week however has been a bit of a disaster work-wise for me…

I have been a bit sleep deprived, my kids have been working me over, tag team wrestling style. My daughter likes to read before going to sleep, but I suspect it’s actually a tactic to get daddy to let her stay up later. Most nights she doesn’t get to sleep until well after 10pm. Then Mr J, my little downs boy, well he just LOVES waking up at around 4-4.30am every morning… So I think on my best night I got maybe 5 hours sleep. Now I can’t complain, my kids are a pretty happy lot, and don’t grumble (much), they are actually pretty easy-going (just like me).

Here is a stock picture of someone practicing my new work appreciation technique

So this week I got back to work and pretty much sat in my office looking absent mindedly at people, and pretending to be awake. On Tuesday morning it all caught up with me and I slept in (badly). The only reason I woke up was that another member of my team rang me on my mobile to say they weren’t coming into work. The call finally raised me from my zombie like, living dead state, and nearly fell out of bed when I saw the time. I then had to drag myself into work to face the music from my boss (arrogantus on steriodicus), who practically handed me a leave form.

Will I go back to the ‘Sunshine Coast’ again? Or will I take Queensland to court for false advertising?

Well of course I will, as the song says, ‘2 out of 3 ain’t bad’, and the previous 2 visits had been just fantastic. Even this visit was fun if wet, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed getting soaking wet more, nor jumped in as many puddles.

Will Rose ever accompany me on one of these expeditions again?

To be honest I have no idea, but I SO appreciated her help and company, that I’d pay her to come next time. But at least if I take anybody else with me to help, I now have the gold standard to compare to… Thanks Rose you are a STAR.

In September the kids are coming down to visit me, and I’m going to take them somewhere where I am hoping it’s also cold and wet, but at least it will be my choice and it will involve snow hopefully next time. At Christmas I am planning to take them back to the Sunshine Coast, when I am sure it’s paradise status will be restored. Plus in Sept when the kids come to my place I may be able to persuade Rose to jump in the pool with the kids again, or perhaps visit the beach with them, if I am a really good boy, just maybe…

Capt. Savage

(Slightly sleep deprived, but still a happy chappy, or maybe just feeling crappy for being back at work…)

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Good weather for ducks!!!

Ok, so why the pictures of ducks and floods Capt. Savage? And why ducks and floods in Queensland?

Well I am on holidays with my three kids up in Queensland, on the “Sunshine Coast’ which, according to the advertising campaigns extolling the virtues of Queensland, is ‘Beautiful one day and Perfect the next’. And it must be true, because I drove past the sign below on the way to Queensland.

I’m also here with Rose, who is part wood duck I think, but I’ll get to that story later. It has been great having her here as an extra set of hands, well actually it has been fantastic (thanks Rose!!), and also my daughter is no longer the only girl which is great for her too (plus for me).

(this sign should be enough evidence for me to take Queensland to court for false advertising!

Yep, since Rose, the kids and I arrived here it practically hasn’t stopped raining. Sunny it isn’t, but has it been bad all the time?

Well to be totally honest it hasn’t been that bad at all, once I got over the idea that you have to keep dry. Rose was the first one to get over that fact it was raining all the time. She is a very independent soul really, and decided to take off to the shops. The day before she had gone with my daughter in my car (but apparently hated it). Now I quite like my car, it’s comfortable, it’s large and bloke-ish due to it largeness (us guys are into our SUVs). But not Rose, to her it’s apparently like driving a Sherman tank… Not the most pleasant or easy experience for her (she drives a zippy little buzzbox thing).

Here is someone driving a Sherman tank… And don’t those big goggles look sooooo cute

Now with all of this wet weather we have spent quite bit of time indoors at the holiday unit we are staying at, and in shopping centres, and in the car, and in fact anywhere where it wasn’t wet (except by our choosing). We had even managed to jump in the heated pool at the place we are staying at, although heated is a loose term in this case. I think that there was just enough heating to reduce the incidence of polar bears and icebergs to close to zero, but not much else…

Nope, there were no polar bears or balding old men in our swimming pool (apart from me)

So Rose was getting a bit of cabin fever, she is not really an indoors kind of women I’ve noticed, so sick of being in prison with me, she decided to dash off for a spot of shopping (you know girls can’t help themselves). Just then the manager of the resort, which is a loose term in Queensland describing anything vaguely like accommodation, paid a visit attempting to find the cartoon network on the satellite channels (the kids had some of Rose’s cabin fever too). Rose said she wouldn’t mind going to the nearby shops and asked how could she get there, well apparently there was a ferry service, she could take me car (the Sherman tank), there was a bus, and of course you could always walk (only around 20-30 minutes). But as the man pointed out, it was raining.

Rose, never one for the easier option, decided to walk, the fact that it hadn’t stopped raining or looked likely to wasn’t going to deter Rose the Amazon. So on went her all-weather anorak, and into the storm strode Rose.

This could have been Rose except her coat wasn’t Red…

So an hour or two later a drowned rat turned up at the door to the unit, shopping expedition complete, puddles forming everywhere she stood, and triumphant having found suitable gifts for her family and even an adorable little butterfly necklace for my little cutiepie (Miss J).

But the image of a rain-soaked Rose, well it was kind of infectious. After lunch we were persuaded to go for a little walk outside with the intrepid explorer Rose. The fact that the rain was still pouring down, well did we care? Well to begin with YES, and once it started to come down heavier I thought enough is enough, let’s go back inside.

But instead we discovered that once you get a little bit wet, why should you stop there, soon we were all walking along the waterfront getting thoroughly drenched. Next we were starting to splash in puddles, then jump in them, and in the end we were walking in the gutters just to get a bit more wet.

This was us, off jumping in puddles

My kids haven’t had so much fun in ages and we ran, jumped, danced, sang our way along the street just having a ball. We even went jumping down onto the beach sand and were even tempted to jump straight into the water (but we held off on that one). But it is amazing that once you are soaked, getting a little bit wetter doesn’t bother you at all.

So what do you do when you are thoroughly soaked, well you jump into the pool don’t you. Or better still you jump into a hot tub, which is where we all ended up.

Rose was probably hoping that this dude was in the hot tub rather than me, but we all have to make sacrifices…

So was our wet old Tuesday on the Sunshine Coast fun? You bet…

Will we be doing it again? Yep can’t wait, the kids had a great time, and so did dad. I’m not so sure about Rose, but the hot tub was warm which maybe helped to defrost her a bit from her epic wetland tour.

And before I forget, there has been Karma Karma by the bucketload… Yep I’ll do a Karma post tonight, more to tell.

CS

(just 3 more days in paradise with the kids and Rose left)