The first of the 60th Birthday celebrations for 2011...

This year quite a few people I know are turning 60...including yours truly!  In the last couple of years a number of my old school friends have got back in touch so straight away that makes for a lot of people in my circle having this milestone birthday. Today was the first for the year. My friend Carmel organised a ladies luncheon to celebrate her birthday. Carmel and I were teaching colleagues from about 1975 until 1981 when she took a promotion and moved away. We stayed friends and both of us had our children at around about the same time. Then in about 1989, Carmel decided to send her son to the school where we had both met up all those years before. I was the Co-ordinator of the After school care centre there and Carmel's son stayed in our centre each day. My older daughter also attended this school and eventually both Carmel's and my younger children attended as well. Now we started being involved with the P& C and fete committees and we did this until our children left primary school. Well and truly by that time, I was back teaching but Carmel had always stayed with the department, only taking maternity leave.

The birthday girl standing up and giving the guests some cheek!

I attended her 40th, her retirement dinner and now today her 60th. It was a lovely venue, 'Room with Roses' Cafe right in the centre of the city in the Old Brisbane arcade. DH drove me in but I came home on the bus, using my new GoCard! It was so long since I've been to the city, but I declined to go after lunch with some of my friends to 'look around' David Jones. I frankly have no interest any more in looking around department stores unless there is something that I especially need to buy. And that is getting less and less...I make gifts or buy gifts from the craft markets, I shop at DFO for gifts or buy gift cards...

My post yesterday mentioned iPods and how I planned to get out the manual and see if I could put some more mp3 music files on the iPod. I loved Linni at Home's suggestion of getting a teenager to do it for me. Problem is, when I got the iPod nearly 2 years ago, DD1 put a number of albums on by copying CD files and transferring them and then supervised my buying a 'Skyhooks' album from iTunes. I promised her faithfully that I would then buy more with the credit I had been given by my brother as well as copying some of my favourite CDs....trouble is I haven't done it and I'm too ashamed to tell DD1 or DD2 and my sweet DS-D reckons she's hopeless at that sort of thing...lol! But all is not lost! I now have lots of time to learn these things as I did my last day as a teacher yesterday.