The Middle!

Ok, so we all know that the name of this blog is going to date pretty badly.  In fact when we came up with it after a couple of days of mulling, it was only a half suggestion.  Most other names we came up with were of course related to soccer.  Spike then pointed out, soccer is not our life, it's only one aspect of it (Ha!); it is one seriously major aspect of all our lives!  Anyway, I had to agree though and after some more consideration 'ibarlows' popped into my consciousness, which isn't very original, but somehow seemed to stick.  Spike and I are by no means 'i' Gen.  Unfortunately we lie somewhere uncomfortably between 'Baby Boomers' and 'X' Gen and like many our age, feel we don't have enough 'flower power' in our souls to be BB's, but aren't 'cool' enough to be 'X' Gen!  We've totally been duped!  Always feeling awkward about having no succinct way to describe our collective identity.

Anyway, after a bit of deliberation we felt that though we aren't 'i' Gen our children certainly are.  We justified it by recognising that Spike is an 'iT' lecturer  (computer science was the name this area was given back in the dark ages of computer technology), drives an 'i30' and uses an 'ipad' countless hours a day for reading; Zoe has an 'iphone' somehow magnetically attached to her person every second of the day; Grant is soon to become the proud owner of an 'ipod', and though I have deliberately chosen to avoid any Apple device that starts with 'i', I'm definitely a regular technology lover and user and by defacto fit into this category.

This blog is by no means our first, and I guess if truth be told, we started 'blogging' way back in 1994 when Spike and I left Australia to live and work in Japan for two years.  We started what we then called, our 'Most Excellent Adventures', (yes, definitely plagiarising Bill and Ted) and wrote countless 'blogs', quaintly called 'newsletters' back then, to family and friends in Australia.  I still have copies of these and one day may attach them to this for Zoe and Grant to have a giggle at when they're older.  We also have blogs from our overseas trips and will link them to this too and our 'Year in Brief' newsletters that we used to send out with Xmas cards.  These serve as a much better record of our time over the years than my memory ever could!

I guess the main reason I wanted to start this particular family blog, is so that there is a record of the kids lives and ours, 'permanently' out there, floating around the ethernet for the kids to go to one day.  Also for a few close family members who live interstate and overseas, to visit every now and then to catch up on 'how much the kids have grown' and 'how old Spike and I are looking! :-)  It's also slightly less concerned with the instant, or present moment than 'facebook', which I have to admit to enjoying every now and then, for it's social aspect.  I do still have a nagging feeling in the back of my head, the same one I had when I joined facebook, that I'm being ridiculously indulgent, and really, who is going to want to know the kind of things I intend posting on here.  I've never been that self obsessed, well hang on, at least not since I was 21 and that's almost another lifetime, so disconnected to this life and the person I am now, that it doesn't really count!  In fact I've come to the point where I should be hitting the 'publish post' button, but feel almost uneasy about the suddenness of this post becoming, as experts now say, 'out there FOREVER'!  Ha Ha!  It's not that I'm worried about the content of it which is going to become part of the permanence of the internet, but the scrutiny of my writing! :-)  How ridiculous Spike will say!  Wow! this is quickly becoming too much about my insecurities and hangups, and not enough about it's real purpose! :-0

Well, here I go, my first post on our family blog!  I've been waiting to do this for quite some years, well before blogs were about, I wanted to set up a 'web page', so here I go!