A WEEK TO FORGET

 Last week was probably a week that both Maree and I would prefer to forget. Maree started the week with the flu which had her in bed most days and sleeping it off and by the end of the week I had also got a dose which has knocked me off my perch.

We both had to get anti-biotics, Maree a second dose and looking like I will need a second dose as well. Anyhow we are on the recovery trail and looking forward to next week.

The weekend was fairly good as the rain has stopped and it was a good opportunity to get some things done around the van and start looking at some paperwork that has to be completed. Maree spent most of the weekend in bed  and I pottered around.

There is an enormous amount of paperwork associated with the bus run which includes about 50 different reporting forms that need to be filled in on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and or yearly basis.

This industry leaves the financial industry for dead believe me. Anyhow here is Maree going strong on the paperwork.

Lazy day in the office

We have been requested to quote on charter work for one of the schools this week and we quoted on three jobs and won two of them.
We will be taking a group of school kids out to the old Dolomite mine at Bundaleer about twenty kms out of Barraba and return a couple of hours later on Tuesday next.

On the 9th of December we have a charter into Tamworth taking 12 school kids into the movies and then returning later in the day.

This is additional work that we had not budgeted for so it is nice income for the business.

Because of the charter work we needed to go to an RTA office to get some recording sheets for our bus and we decided to go to Tamworth in between the morning and afternoon runs.

We spent half an hour at the RTA only to be told that they did not have the discs and that we would have to purchase them from the manufacturers of the equipment so in disgust we did the only thing possible to cheer us up -  we went to the shops.

Funnily enough there is an old adage about going shopping to save money but when you take the costs of the local IGA supermarket vs large town supermarkets there is no comparison - you do save money. We saved about $80 on our shopping which more than pays for any fuel that you use getting into town.

Justification for making the decision on going shopping Maree tells me. Returned home for the afternoon run and then to the local watering hole and the raffles and took home another meat tray.

The Friday night sojourn at the local is a good way to get to know the locals as people come up to us and out of the blue ask us how the bus run is going and how are we settling in.

Its a nice feeling becoming part of the community and it also helps with getting to know the people who are the power brokers in a small town like this as well.

We struggled through the week and now it is the weekend again and Maree is just about over her flu and mine is barely hanging on but should be fully fit by next week.

There is not much to report this posting due to not being out and about too much however we still managed to put some things together.

The council is currently grading the dirt road up the mountain and will continue over the next couple of weeks.

They have graded about 10 kms so far and the difference it has made to the run has been enormous. So far it has taken about 5 minutes off the trip and by the time it is finished I will save about 10 minutes each way until it starts to erode again.

My niece has been putting up the christmas lights around her home this week, or I should say her father has been climbing all over the roof and doing it and I have included a couple of photos of the initial stage.

Lisa's place is on a double block and goes a long way back and my camera could not pick up all the lights that she has going to the back fence.

However you can visualise how it looks and I will post more pictures as she keeps putting more lights up over time.

Everyone seems to be in the Christmas lights spirit as my sister Mary decided to get the old fella to put her lights up around the house.

Her Post Office

Her Home

Her Reindeer

Reindeer on the Roof

We then thought that we needed to cheer ourselves up also so we decided to put the lights up around our van as well.

Not much but we like them

A funny thing happened last night when Maree and I were talking about nothing in general, we both looked at each other momentarily and as we looked at each other a penny dropped at the exact same moment.

We both realised at the same instant that tomorrow Sunday was our 28th anniversary and we had nearly forgotten it. It was an eerie moment and we both had a good laugh.

Anyway its now Sunday and we have both survived the week and ready to go next week. Thank goodness it's only three weeks to school holidays and we are going away for four weeks.

I will post the itinerary in the next posting as we will be calling in on a number of you and you will be able to see the dates. We will make contact over the next few weeks to make arrangements.

Bus is all clean again and ready for tomorrow's run and by tomorrow afternoon it will look like we had never cleaned it.

For now it is all I have to report so we will see ya all soon.


Bill and Maree