Before Margo and I married, we had already contracted with an architect, bought a block of land, and began designing our first house. This would fulfil a shared, lifelong, dream of building our fantasy home. A fresh start. A bold design and a place that we would transform from an empty piece of land into a home that would provide both. the escape from business and become a space to entertain employees, business associates and most of all, family. The overriding element in the design featured two separate guest suites, each with en-suite and a separate room to relax and to look out on the fabulous ever-changing Colorado landscape. It was an ambitious project that began in March 1999 and where we first took occupancy on July 4, 2000 but had to wait another year for the house to be fully built-out – our master bedroom suite being the last room to be finished. As for the two suites, these were included as we wanted to provide my parents an away-from-Sydney home – they would visi...
An early morning rise, repeated several times this past month, saw us standing outside the local Starbucks as it opened its doors. There’s something weird about an empty Starbucks, even more so these days as they provide table service. Serving coffee in cups and breakfast sandwiches on plates. We had returned to Colorado with a firm agenda to be followed. Our grandson Evan was scheduled for an operation, our storage area had to be emptied and yes, we had to get new plates for our latest vehicle purchased back at the end of June – the Beast, otherwise known as the Land Rover Defender 110 V8. Sipping that first cup of coffee, constantly checking my watch, awaiting a call from the folks at 1-800-GOT-JUNK to turn up for that final clean-out of the remaining goods and chattels we felt were way past their use-by-date, no longer holding any emotional attachment. Yes, gone is my thirty-year plus collection of Road and Track magazines with almost 400 issues filling numerous cartons I co...