Noughts and crosses

Last Saturday while Jessye went to her dance classes the rest of us went to see the finalists in the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award in the grounds of the Werribee Mansion, half an hour out of town on the way to Geelong. The reason for this venture into the world of high art was that a good friend of ours from Wellington, Kon Dimopoulis, was one of the finalists. Kon, his wife, Adele, and their two daughters moved from Wellington to Melbourne at the same time we did. Kon is the creator of the fibreglass reeds sculpture on the roundabout near Wellington airport and he is starting to make his mark in Melbourne. A work of his will soon be erected in Federation Square. Anyway, Adele had arranged for a few of their friends to meet them at Kon's sculpture so we showed up. Sophie posed with the artist in front of his work.

And behind it..........

We all had a good gawk from near and far.

There was plenty of surrounding ground to explore.

Kon's was one of 30 sculptures chosen for this exhibition some others of which we managed to check out.

We ended up back at Kon's for a hands-on experience of its possibilities then hung out with the other fans at a neighbouring winery briefly.

The next day while Peter recovered from Saturday's socialising, the girls and I went to an MSO violinist's house across the park for a little welcome back party she gave for the MSO's previous Chief Conductor, Markus Stenz. Markus left a couple of years ago for a job at Cologne Opera and he's back in Melbourne for a couple of weeks as a guest conductor. He brought his wife, Alice and their two children, Max (6) and Lucy (3). There were other kids there too from age 1 - 13. It didn't take Jessye long to make a balloon shawl and for Sophie to find the Dame Edna gear.

Markus enjoyed erudite conversation with our three and spent a lot of time hanging out with them.

He sat at Jessye's feet while she explained the basics of noughts and crosses to him.

They played some more.....

and more......

Finally he felt ready to branch out and take on Rosie and Sophie before going back to Jessye for an extended tournament while Max and Lucy did their own thing.

Alice, Monica whose house we were in and I were in the kitchen chatting when Jessye burst in loudly announcing that she'd beaten "that guy", that guy having just finished conducting Wagner's Ring Cycle in Cologne the week before. Certainly put things in perspective!

On the medical front, Rosie's last scan showed that there is more swelling than in her February one so having given us the hard word about getting her off the Dexamethasone before Easter, Wirginia, her specialist, ate her words and ordered her back on it with a vengeance. Starting with quite a high dose for 3 days and then cutting back to half that for the next week she is now saying that we will just have to put up with the nasty side-effects and possibly keep her on it long-term until the swelling subsides, the priority being to protect Rosie from more swelling in her brain. Amazingly she hasn't had headaches or vomiting often associated with this much swelling. She's having another MRI next Wednesday to see if the Dexamethasone is having an effect.

Our appointment for some hearing tests was a bit anticlimactic because after doing the basic test with headphones and looking at some graph-like picture on a screen, the guy proclaimed that Rosie's hearing is absolutely fine or at least it was that day. He said it's possible that there had been some fluid around the inner ear which just went away. He was reluctant to proceed with the more complex tests given that result so I guess we'll go back to the ear guy we saw first for our preordained followup appointment and see what he says. I'm happy to just forget about that anyway and concentrate on this nasty swelling business.