Happenings

Last night, our neighbour's dog barked from 11.30pm to at least 1am straight. Non-stop. He's a lab-cross so this is no small bark. I was infuriated for a few reasons: the owners often leave their dog home alone for the night so they're not there to quiet him; I had to get up in the morning for the gym for the first time in over a week (and couldn't skip it cos it was with my trainer); the dog was obviously anxious about something (do the owners care?); the owners were clearly not home, so they could not hear what the rest of the neighbourhood had to put up with; and it's happened before. Last time it happened, we went to the fence to talk to the dog to calm him down and give him pats. That time he was also scratching at the back door non-stop, so clearly needed calming. This time, it seemed he was barking at something in the bushes (perhaps a hedgehog), so he may not have been quite anxious, but still there was no-one there to shut him up. So Adrian like the criminal he is snuck over to the neighbour's property to calm the dog. He was over there for about half an hour. Such an angel-boy - he knew I had to get up early (and he doesn't at the moment have to get up for any work) so he did it alone. After a while the barking stopped and at some point I got to sleep.

I've wondered about leaving a note in their mailbox - it is completely unfair on the entire neighbourhood to have to put up with that. And for the dog to be alone when he does that is also unfair on him. I don't know, confrontation is not really my style... I just hope there's a good few months in between this episode and the next, just like there was between this episode and the last.

So, as some of you have heard, Adrian and I and our mini-menagerie are going to be moving up to the North Shore. Adrian got a job with the Defence Force at the Defence Technology Agency, as a research scientist. He also got offered 3 other positions, but together we decided this one was probably the most interesting and more research-oriented instead of industry/engineering, which is the path we think he wants to take. We got a little flat in Devonport which we haven't seen yet - my sister and her boyfriend kindly looked at it for us since they live up there. It's apparently very small so we may need to look for somewhere bigger in the future but we'll see.

Adrian starts on the 29th November, so he will be going up the weekend before that. My last day at my job is 2nd December, so I will be going up the following weekend.

Wish us luck in our next chapter xxx