David:

Sunday: Not long before Cathy and I got together (almost two years ago) I took her to a friend's birthday party down the coast. I have known this friend of mine, Des, since my late teens. Cathy only got to meet Des, and his partner Vic, that one time, and then they headed off overseas. They came back a few months ago, but we hadn't got around to catching up until today. We got up early and drove down the coast to see them both before Vic headed off to work. It was excellent to see them after so long, but a shame that we couldn't spend more time with them. Des and Vic also have their own website (click here to visit it).

After visit Des and Vic, Cathy and I went for a bit of a surf. The wind had picked up though, and the waves weren't very good. We went for a walk to Surfers Paradise afterwards, stopping to have some gelato. We bumped into Matt and Jo from acrobatics as we were walking back to the car.

Monday: A woman from Norway sent me a message today from my website. I will have to respond this weekend (the only time I get a chance to answer my emails nowadays). Taking a look at her website (click here to see it), I found out that she was originally from Australia. It was interesting to briefly look through her website (I'll have a better look this weekend). The page showing pictures of her family, progressing from her childhood to her grandchildren, was particularly interesting. I always find it facinating to see people's personal websites.

Saturday: Time to relax; it's a long weekend ... not really! Cathy has an assignment to do and I have to work on my job application. Even though I am working in the position I have at the moment, it is only temporary until they go through the whole recruitment and selection process before placing someone into the position permanently. I am enjoying the job very much, so I am going to do my best to get the it. I admit to being worried that someone with many more years of experience in the area will apply and I will miss out on the job.

Here is the next entry from my UK journal:

Wednesday 23/06/93 Near Portsmouth. 9:23 pm.

So far the new tent seems to be going well, although we had no wind or rain to test it last night.

We visited the small castle near where we slept last night. This one was one of two we visited today built by Henry VIII; busy man wasn't he.

The best parts of the day were the visits we made to two pet shops. The first one we visited before we took a tape tour of an old merchants house (13th century). This pet shop had many different animals you don't usually see in your local pet store; e.g., chinchillas, chipmunks (both white and brown with stripes, the later were really tame and would grab your finger with their little paws and nibble your finger nail), an assortment of lizards and snakes, and (much to Monique's discomfort) they had two giant tarantulas for sale for ?35 each. Imagine spending ?35 ($70 Australian) on a big hairy spider.

The second pet shop we visited was advertised as the ultimate pet shop … and it was. They had the usual different animals here, but the biggest attraction for us was two brothers we made friends with there. Their names were Bubble and Squeek and they were South American Marmoset Monkeys.

These little fellas (and it was very obvious that they were fellas) were the most intelligent looking animals I think I've ever seen close up. If you can imagine a squirrel with a human face and eyes then you've got these two. At one stage we were letting them feel our hats as we leaned towards the cage, and they would peer under the hat at our eyes. They would look you in the eyes and tilt their heads from side to side trying to work you out; you almost felt like you were the ones in the cage with them looking in at you. They also like looking through the lenses of Monique's sun glasses. These two were not for sale but you can buy them from breeders over here. I want one!

One thing I almost forgot was that Monique managed to get her finger bitten (drew blood) by a hamster … HA, HA, HA luck it wasn't a tarantula (editing note 24/01/04: Our relationship was obviously going pretty poorly by this time).

We also visited Portchester Castle, which had a very high keep with timber floors and large dining halls. One of the floors was above an extremely tall hall making for uncomfortable thoughts of coming crashing through the floor into the hall below. We saw a real fool in the car park who made a few silly comments and had a drugged out smile you could just step on. He gave me a stupid wave as he drove off so I blew him a kiss.

10:03 pm.