Senator Andrew Bartlett
Sunday, March 27, 2005
 
A Whole lotta - pleasant sort of - Nothin going on
As I was leaving the office on Thursday evening prior to the Easter long weekend, I checked my diary and discovered I had no politics related events at all for the whole 4 days! I figured there must be some error in my computer diary, but apparently not. I guess it means the general ‘I must spend more time at home’ mindset I’ve been trying to adopt since the election is starting to have an effect. It’s certainly the first time in over a decade I’ve had a free Easter.

In the interests of de-mystifying what (at least one) politician does on the odd occasion when he does have some spare time, my weekend consists of unremarkable but moderately pleasurable things such as:

· Watching my first game of Rugby League for the year on television, a good (and slightly unexpected) win to the Brisbane Broncos over the Roosters -and getting slightly peeved that there was no AFL on TV on the Saturday afternoon).

· Driving out to the main University of Queensland campus at St Lucia with my little girl to feed the ducks in the duck pond. We got there just when the fire that gutted St John's College was well underway, which provided an unexpected backdrop. The ducks looked well fed but acted like they hadn’t eaten for weeks, literally snatching the bread out of our hands. (Maybe it was something in the water, as their ponds were a particularly virulent shade of bright algal green.)

· We also flew a kite on one of the soccer fields for half an hour or so - something I never did as a child and always assumed required at least a little bit of skill, but which I now know is something a three year old can do. (I’ll leave out commentary on Voluntary Student Unionism from this post, but the St Lucia campus really has a lovely set of grounds and facilities.)

· We spent a while watching the speedboats on the Brisbane River and wondering how many millions of dollars the houses on the other side of the River at Fairfield and Highgate Hill cost.

· Caught up on some of my emails, websites and other assorted articles and newspapers I’d been putting to one side. I also posted some comments on a few blogs around the place and wrote my monthly report for the Queensland Democrat members’ newsletter.

· Did an interview for Channel 7 for a news story they were doing on the planned new security arrangements at Parliament House. I presume they asked for my comments based on a fleeting mention I got in a column by Matt Price on the issue, which in turn was based on a speech I gave to the Senate about it. I actually spoke on this a couple of times in the past too, in March and June last year. I don’t know if Channel 7 used a grab from me or not, as I haven’t been watching the TV news.

· Going to my Mums for Sunday lunch with most of my siblings and a few other relatives likely to be there. My Mum is very supportive, is a Democrat member and we agree surprisingly often on policy issues, but she does have a liking for John Howard, which can lead to the occasional disagreement.

· I’ve also wasted stupid amounts of time playing the Age of Empires computer game. I hadn’t played this for a long time, but found it lying in a drawer somewhere and fired it up. I have an unfortunate tendency to get captured by those things, and many hours later found myself cursing for wasting such a huge amount of time (especially a total waste of time when the computer kept beating me!!) I’m discovering computer games are another thing a three year old can do, although I’m keeping her away from the stab and shoot type of games for as long as I can.

· I will (once again) vow off chocolates and potato chips after the weekend. I gave up this stuff for a while, but I’ve been slipping back into bad habits again with it, so will have to cut it out completely. I’ve actually found junk food exceptionally hard to give up for any significant length of time. Hopefully by putting it up on a public website, it might make me feel more like I’d better stick to it.

· I will also do some preparatory reading for a couple of Senate Committee Inquiries I’m part of and do some writing for a few articles and papers I have to present. (I’ll leave that until Monday -saving the fun stuff until last.)

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Sunday, March 27, 2005 Permalink
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