Idlemind - nickcoster.com
Future gazing from a quiet corner of cyberspace.

The food was great, the drink flowed freely and everyone had a very happy new year. Waking up this morning was not as hard as I thought it might have been after the night before. We are on the road back home now, stopping off at Kingscliff for a couple of nights so that we can be close to the Gold Coast for a meeting tomorrow. On Thursday we will head home via the New England Highway and stay over in Armidale.

Today though, we waved goodbye to the Brisbane clan and are having a quiet little rest at the Peppers resort here. Not a bad start to the new year if you ask me.

I am trying for speed rather than form today so I have taken a few quick snaps on my phone to capture the New Year’s preperations.

These two are the master chefs in action. Mark and Marie cooking up a satay extravaganza!

After much drama throught the year, the result is this amazing kitchen. Adrienne and i have threatened to bring in a film crew to televise the cooking activities that will be going on in here in the future. Mark has his dream Kitchen.

The two best friends in the world - Adreinne and Nicole. Somehow even though we have started off with completely different holidays we have bumped into each other all along the coast.

Let the party begin…

I was just looking back on my previous post about Facebook. The little sparks of contact and inspiration that came from the discovery of new friends and old, quickly turned into a nuisance. Although I still check in on my own profile every now and then I barely use it at all. One of my big concerns has been around the constant need to share private information with every application developer that wanted me to use their app.

I should be able to see exactly what data is being shared and be able to limit it and control its use. Until this happens I am unlikely to signup to too many more applications on Facebook.

It is fascinating watching how the “gen y” crowd is using this and other social networking services. They are totally fearless about sharing every last detail about their lives. It makes me feel like an old fart to say so but the way that they these services is completely different to my own. They practically live in these worlds; or rather they co-exist in both the online and offline worlds.

For me though these worlds are still quite separate and the world of Facebook has taken a noticeable back seat to the rest of the non-Facebook universe.

The Christmas festivities are now beginning to blur into the New Year ones. The last few days have been largely unproductive with the exception of a few days of client work.

I always find this a joyous but difficult time. It is joyous mainly because Adrienne is the living embodiment of Christmas Spirit. She delights in everything related to Christmas and more often than not brings everyone else along with her energy. Even more exciting in the past two years has been seeing this same excitement being shared with her delightful Goddaughter who is nearly four. In fact it is this little angel who has become the key focus of this time of year.

The difficulty comes from the multiple challenges of having family located all over the place and the desire to try and use the slow business environment to take a holiday of some sort. Lately (past 3-4 years) Adrienne and I have tried to escape the contortions of being everywhere and have opted to travel overseas to experience Christmas’s around the world. Well that was the plan anyway. This idea has appealed to others in the clan and instead of a quiet little escape we have ended up with a travelling Christmas family circus.

The difficulty increases for me because my side of the family no longer gets together in the same place, live in different places and don’t get excited about Christmas anymore. This year I have seen more of my family that normal, although it has been more of a drop in to my brother and dad than any sort of Christmas event. It is my mum that I miss right now. She has moved to central New South Wales, between 3-4 hours drive away (depending on traffic) which means that it is pointless to do just a day trip and even a weekend is half consumed by the driving.

Ultimately I really don’t know what to do. Christmas is complicated but we will wait and see what 2008 holds.

Coincidentally the previous post was the 100th on the site. It has been around for a while now, since 2003 when I started just throwing junk at the page. That makes it nearly 4 and a half years old and although the posts have not been exactly flying off the page it has been limping along. Hopefully I can keep my promise to myself and start getting some daily posts going.