Monthly Archives: February 2011

Dummy Gone

Hugo crying in a dramatic pose with his hands on his face
Hugo's dramatic crying pose, with hands on face. Not quite the reaction from today but I'm sure he felt that way inside.

Hugo has had a dummy from a relatively early age and he loves it. When combined with his favourite plush toy Boris, Hugo is a happy little man. Unfortunately he had progressively become more and more dependent on the dummy and wanted it more often than was required.

In the last couple months, Claire and I have been quietly reducing his access to the dummy throughout the day and telling him it is only for sleeping. If he took it in the car, he was allowed it while we were driving but knew he had to take it out when we stopped – which he was very good about.

Today for the first time in over two years, Hugo went to sleep for his lunchtime nap without his dummy. He was asking Claire where his dummy was and Claire let him know it was lost but that he shouldn’t worry about it. He talked to himself for a little while in bed and got up to check his bedroom to make sure it wasn’t there and then put himself back in bed and went off to sleep.

Tonight, it wasn’t quite as smooth – he still hadn’t had it all day and after his bath – like clockwork he asked me where Boris & his dummy was. We play a game after bath and go ‘hunting’ throughout the house to find them – unfortunately I was only able to find Boris again. He went to bed okay and then talked, cried, complained and talked some more for about 30-40 minutes before he went off to sleep (in the doorway of his bedroom).

I’ve now just tucked him back into bed and I’m so proud of him for getting through the day and hopefully the night without his dummy. It has been one of his most treasured possessions in the lsat two years, so I can understand why he was upset but I’m so pleased that we’re making steps to get rid of it as well.

I’m under no delusions that this will be our final encounter with the dummy but we up for the challenge and hopefully within the next week or two it’ll be a distant memory!

Suncorp Bank Anti-Fraud Department Saved Me $686.73

For the first time in ten years, I’ve been a victim of credit card fraud to the tune of $686.73!

I first became aware of it this morning when I received a phone call at work from Suncorp informing me that they suspected that there was fraudulent credit card transactions on my account. That was after they called home & left a message because Claire couldn’t answer the phone and then followed that up with a call to my mobile but I was driving to work. You’ve got to appreciate their persistence to call three different numbers trying to get a hold of me.

I don’t keep an eagle eye on my bank account, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed that transaction sitting on my credit card for a week or more but the Suncorp credit card protection system picked it up the day after it happened, which I think is great.

The Suncorp representative that called me at work gave me the run down on what had happened, also said they’d tried several other transactions as well but they were declined for some reason. They immediately set about cancelling my credit card and lodged a dispute about the charge for me.

Claire checked back through out past transactions to make sure nothing else was on there and it doesn’t appear as though there were. I called Suncorp back to check about what will happen next and was given case numbers for the cancellation & the transaction dispute to follow up on if required.

I’ve been really impressed with Suncorp customer service of late, like for instance sending me warning emails about large money transfers automatically. Now I’ve had them tell me about a fraudulent charge on my credit card and it’ll be resolved within the next few days and my replacement credit card will arrive mid next week.

Great to see them going out of their way to keep a customer informed about their money.

Fuel Price

I don’t understand how fuel is priced.

Last week I took a drive up to Toowoomba and before I left I grabbed some fuel on the Gold Coast at $1.42 for standard unleaded. As I drove towards Brisbane, the price remained fairly similar.

As soon as I got to the western side of the Logan Motorway, less than 100Km from the Gold Coast – the fuel price started to fluctuate by 2-3c per litre.

By the time I made my way into the Gatton area, the fuel price had dropped by a further 2-3c per litre. As I neared the bottom of the range at Toowoomba, the price continued to fall and when returning home I picked up fuel for $1.28 per litre, a whole $0.14 per litre cheaper than I paid on the Gold Coast a few hours earlier.

Now I’d assume that there is a cost to the fuel companies to distribute their fuel around the country. I also assume, though I could be completely wrong, that the fuel processing takes place in or near capital cities. As such, it would see logical to me that the price to distribute a litre of fuel to the Gold Coast would be less than trucking it approximately 200Km west to Toowoomba and climbing over 1000m mountain.

Today I got fuel at a BP service centre, one of the big ones that sits off to the side of a motorway. On a Saturday, surely one of their highest load days of the week – every tank and bowser was conveniently out of unleaded. The difference between 91RON and 95RON, a handy 14c per litre.

Just try and convince me that the oil companies aren’t gouging the Australian public for every dollar.

Evie, 6 Months & Strong

Evie Lattimore, 6 Months OldIt has been a long while since I written anything about Evie, though I’ve had a number of items sitting in draft and haven’t managed to complete them.

In the two months since Evie was four months old, a lot has changed. In fact, it seems like every other day of the week Evie is learning something new.

As I mentioned in the last post when Evie was four months old, she was trying really hard to roll over but just couldn’t quite manage it and would get stuck half way. Since that was written, Evie can now flip herself over onto her stomach without any issues. Of course, getting onto the stomach was only half the problem – getting back took another few weeks to master but she eventually worked it out.

One of the other big changes has been her strength, Evie is pushing her stomach right off the ground. When Hugo was six months old, he wasn’t doing that yet, though that could be a by product of him being a little tank. None the less, we’d expected Evie to get up onto all fours in no time but it didn’t happen in that window – so we wait.

I’ll work my way through another draft and press the go button on a more recent post in the next day or two, stay tuned!