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Archive Category: Musings
- Hook:: Crook
- Greg:: Brady
- Sixty:: Minutes
- Breakfast:: Lunch
- Dollar:: Cents
- Unpredictable: Messy
- O:: P
- Bathing suit:: Fluorescent lights, ugh
- Inconsiderate:: Selfish
- Marx::Karl
Pieces of Toast
Wednesday, 30 October 2002
You know who you are. I keep meeting lovely people and supplements for cats
then changing jobs etc. It's way too easy to lose track of cool people. I thought that if I made this page sort of useful (dates, time, links) plus kept it regularly updated (now I have a kickass connection that I am on pretty much daily), then it would be a good way to stay in touch. Once I figure it out, people will be able to post to the page as well, letting everyone know about how many pieces of toast they ate yesterday and other similarly riveting facts..... Actually, none of you will be reading this today, of for a few more days, as I am trying to sort out the page and get it looking how I want - which could take a large portion of forever.....
Sushi is Exciting.
Friday, 1 November 2002
Just had lunch and vitamins for pregnant dogs
am full of Japanese bought for me by my dad. I am such a non-exciting person. The only Japanese I have ever eaten is sushi boxes, california rolls and Rachaels lush tempura vegetables....*sigh* Japanese is yum. Unfortuately, as I stayed up so late last night toiling with indecent pleasure on [m i a o w] said the cat and you could use my eyebags to go shopping with. I
cannot go home and rest however, as I am doing a cultural thing. Yes - Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards. All forty dollars of it!!
I Flu Away
Monday, 4 November 2002
Here cometh the cat vitamin c
flu. I woke up and had all the vocal characteristics of a chain smoking porn star. So I jogged around the oval. Twice. And walked around it three times. Hello to Claire, my only visitor as of yet, for this site is a secret until it is built properly. I'm thinking of including a list of what I'm
currently reading. I like it when other people do that. Today is the day before the Melbourne Cup. I really do have to learn how to put money on a horse. Christine knows all that stuff. BTW, the Davitt Awards sucked big time. The only good bit was that Carolyn Moorwood won, and so did Kerry Greenwood. The night was over priced, over long and overly boring......grrrr. It's Monday.
And Gallop….
Tuesday, 5 November 2002
Today I wished I bet on the races 
( Thoat is sore.
Floods. And Flooding.
Saturday, 9 November 2002
Spent the natural cat vitamins
last three days up at Mt Macedon at the first national conference on flooding that Australia has had for ten years. Despite the fact that it sounds about as interesting as watching paint dry, it was a lot more intriguing than I thought it would be. Australia's flood management and education seems to be very haphazard, without any national body to direct it and nobody taking responsibility for any attempted flash flood warnings. All very reassuring. However, the food was awesome and the grounds of Emergency Management Australia rival the Melbourne Botanical Gardens - divine. It was sad that I spent the whole three days with the flu sitting in my ears (which kept dropping in and out) and my throat, which just throbbed steadily enough to make itself known. Thank god it's Saturday!!
Festively Criminal
Monday, 11 November 2002
The Yarraville Crime Festival (the one session I made it to) was v.fun. I came third in natural cat supplements
the Crime Quiz and scored three new books! (Naturally David Honeybone - editor of Crime Factory magazine, came first - which is to say he hammered everyone else....). Flu or whatever it is lingers on - the doctor informs me it's a virus and thus I must suffer til it goes *sigh*. Today is going to be 30 degrees and this is a good thing - long may it continue. Spent last night by myself at home, which is always a little bit decadent feeling. I've been working on some [Bilby] songs for the second album. Mung has been very crafty and given myself, Christine and Jel all the same songs - I suppose he'll be able to pick and choose from a range of what we throw at him! What is [Bilby]? Check out the website... Must get to South Gippsland to water the garden for my dad who is on a week away on a boat on the Murray River. The Humber and I will sally forth
this afternoon....having Monday's off was an inspired decision.....
B=0 Computer=2
Tuesday, 12 November 2002
OK, it’s about five minutes to missing link pet supplements
one am and I'm in the country - the kind of country that has no street lights and lots of animal sounds. I have been waging valiant battle with my dad's computer since 11am this morning, have bought him an new one in desperation, have been sold a dodgy hard drive, have spent the last three hours ascertaining that fact and now have regressed to using the original 1.4gig (eeek!) drive from the old dinosaur computer in the newer one *sigh*. Computers, for all their wonders, are ruled by sod's law. Anything that doesn't work, will continue not to work until one has pulled out one significant clump of one's own hair....M is sitting in the opposite chair reading a book called Scorn - a book of wonderous quotes that he is spouting at intervals. I am unruffled as I have had two mugs of black coffee (more than I drink in over the
span of six months) and a shot of Chivas. Am actually remarkably unruffled....
FOR GOD'S SAKE!! HOW LONG DOES THIS OPERATING SYSTEM TAKE TO INSTALL??!! (...and when it does....will it fit on a 1.6gig drive???!)
B=1 Computer=0
Tuesday, 12 November 2002
Well, one hour’s sleep isn’t all that much to coat supplement for dog
get through the day on…..[snores] I have no stamina without sleep – I have already power napped at my desk by accident – twice (though no one can tell because my back is to them and it looks as if I am intensely interested in what’s on my screen). The computer, of course, is what caused my downfall. Until 4:30am I battled with it, and finally (though this is a debatable assertion) I beat it! The joy, at that early hour, of hearing the trilling of the modem as it makes a faultless connection to the Warragul server, when before it only ever connected once out of every five times. The sparkle and zip of a brand new operating system, the reinstallation of My Documents and the dubious importing of old email messages… aaahhh…for those things I have not slept. I think I must remember at some point to get a life… Oh, I am going to see the ‘classic fifties noir film’ Kiss Me Deadly tonight (though whether I’ll watch or just pass out is an intriguing question)… [yawns….again]
Aimless Walking
Wednesday, 13 November 2002
mmmmm. long aimless walks through city. buying a vitamin c dosage for dogs
chocolate for $1.20 at David Jones (an apricot royale - very worth it). my lunch break ended up being an hour and 45 minutes long....evil....evil....evil....but strangely fulfilling...
Hello to Claire, Lorraine and Mae....
Treading Water
Thursday, 14 November 2002
Today is a nupro dog vitamins
very non-constructive one. V.hard to do work, as I know I must leave early to get to....the Dentist ( Oh dear. I ate a chocolate cupcake at lunchtime as if it was my only hope. Please let the dentist be kind. Pleeeeeese. Let me remain fairly untraumatised? I really hate when you stick a book in your bag to take on the train to work to read while travelling and also at lunchtime, and you have a niggle that you've seen it before....but the blurb on the back doesn't bring anything to mind, and then as soon as you settle with your california rolls and your aforementioned cupcake...you open it up and recognise the characters immediately....*grrrrr* Does anyone want a copy of the Frances Fyfield? Have set up comments on the page and battled ceaselessly to get my archives working.... I think all is well. [she grips a nearby tree] Am looking
for a weather button to put on my page... Bidston Moss have a gig on the 21st of December at good morning captain so that will be a nice way to see the year out....
T.G.I.F
Friday, 15 November 2002
Yay…it’s Friday! Oh god. I just realised what I didn’t do at lunch time! I didn’t go to pet form vitamins
the bank to get my market float!! Eeeek. Will run now and try to make it!
Floating
Friday, 15 November 2002
OK, got my float money, now only a vitamins for dogs skin
few more minutes of work to try and not look like a slacker who just ran to the bank for twenty five minutes (the teller couldn't believe that God had singled her out to a psychotic like myself who demanded astonishing amounts of small coins and notes). Tonight I think I am going to walk up to the Queen Vic. market and see if there's some fish stall
still open and I will take it home and see if M will cook it up without demolishing the kitchen (which is something that detracts a little bit of enjoyment from even the most yummy dinner). Am still trying to figure out a solution for getting the weather on to [miaow] but no luck so far. Tonight I have sworn to hang out at home and practice my Sneeze songs because they're heading down to Melbourne next weekend and there's a couple of shows lined up....I wish I had a photographic memory for this kind of thing....
Orgasmatron Failure
Tuesday, 19 November 2002
Oh, and vitamin c for dog
in previous whinge, forgot to mention yesterday's disaster. I traversed the entire length and bredth of Melbourne Central yesterday lunchtime (only occasionally sidetracked by shoes) looking for an appropriate birthday present for one Rie.H and I stumbled on what I thought was the perfect giftie - yes, of course you guessed it, the - ORGASMATRON - the ultimate head massager (in case you were worrying). Handed it to birthday girl with a smug sense of satisfaction... .naturally, it was such a perfect gift that she has been an Orgasmatron convert for more than a year and actually had one sitting on her loungeroom window sill. The shame! It shall be exchanged, though what one can get of a similar calibre from the Geographic Shop is highly questionable....
Scott has a blog page now, btw - am I allowed to publish the link?
No Sunday Driving
Sunday, 24 November 2002
Sunday Indoors Today I conquered the pet joint supplement
world from my couch! I hereby proclaim that no one should have to work on Mondays. Well, maybe half the population should so the other half feels lucky, and then they can rotate every six months. No way would I have had the nice day I had today if I'd had to go to work tomorrow. Didn't get to bed til three thirty after last nights gig, so didn't surface until woken by a mournful cat at about 11am. I had egg and soldiers made for me
and only left the couch to have a bath and put on different pajamas! I caught up on the last two weeks of my study and so assauged some of that guilt. Tomorrow is another study day - but I also have an appointment at my optometrist - it will be one month since I had my eyes lasered! She's going to let me know whether I'm OK to go surfing and swimming and stuff like that. I'm excited!!
Obviously if all goes well I will have to visit a shoe shop in my quest for some chunky summer sandals - I've only got thongs or sandals with a heel which are no good for anything but work. A girl needs the kind of sandals that are good for jumping around in. I'd like to move my site to MovableType but I have to wait to hear from the ISP whether I can do it or not...
Eeyore Eeyore
Monday, 25 November 2002
The Monday Mope Not a supplement for dog
good response from optometrist; laser surgery has enabled me to see like a raptor, but my eyes are suffering from lack of lubrication ( I have to go back in a week... my eyes are getting grazed from lack of moisture. I am now in possession of lubricating drops and gel! Naturally, retail therapy became a necessity. My new shoes are.... not startingly lascivious, but super comfy...(please ignore that I typed that, it is a very old/sensible person's thing to say. The guy in the shop was very helpful - I was torn between the more glamourous pair and the practical pair... "Ohhhh," I sigh, viewing my feet in practical sandals from every possible angle. 'They're just not very exciting."
"Depends what you want them for, love," responds shoe seller guy in a Zen-like manner.
"Well, they need to survive the beach, a music festival, camping, um..."
I look beseechingly at him in the hope that he will take the decision from me. No girl really wants to have to take on the decision to buy sensible shoes. Do they? He'd gone. I saw him spouting wisdom at a German tourist. I put on the more frivolous pair and walked around the shop, imagining I was stumbling around at the Meredith Music Festival, weaving around tent pegs and evil remants of Hare Krishna food. The decision became simpler. Fifty sensible dollars later I
was driving away from the temptations of Chapel Street towards museli at FeedBack (one of my three currently acceptable cafes....)
Etiquette?
Wednesday, 27 November 2002
An etiquette driven by sight, sound, scratch and vitamin for dogs
smell - theage.com.au When you get into your car, it's like stepping into your own little house on wheels; this is YOUR private domain, and you can play whatever music you like, you can make whatever noises you like, you can create whatever smells you like, you can scratch whatever itches you like, YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU LIKE IN YOUR LITTLE MOVING HOME - sometimes when I'm driving in my car, I like to roll up the
windows really tight on a hot day, and sit there quietly, suffering in the heat, with my face melting off and my hands fusing to the steering wheel, just because I like people to think I've got air-conditioning.
--Danny Katz--
A Different Beth
Thursday, 28 November 2002
Well…maybe. Didn’t think I would write today, but was inspired by the best dog vitamin
blog of another Beth who is having turmoils...she mentioned in her post about a friend who had a 'head against brick wall realisation' and I had one of those the other day too...though completely insignificant... M was driving me to work and we go through a bit of North Melbourne where there are kind of industrial buildings that are big enough for trucks to drive into, and I saw in big letters on one
doorway MAX HEADROOM. Here comes my blonde moment….wait for it…
I had only ever thought of that as the name for that 3D plasticine-y looking guy in the eighties…it had never occurred to me that it was short for ‘maximum head room’. Oh dear. This kind of thing happens to me often enough to be slightly unsettling. Mow has had his fur shaved and the report from home says he now looks like a skinny feral rat that should be living in a drain somewhere… (previously he was a puff of Persian-ish fur). Welcome to Summer, Mow – it kicks off on Sunday.
Is Horlicks Good?
Wednesday, 4 December 2002
I think that sleep is a supplements for cats
necessary. I am going to by some Horlicks. I was jogging...
jogging..around the oval at a quarter to six this morning. All because my horoscope said it would be a good idea to get rid of stress via exercise. Yeah right. Considering that my normal friendly stress levels peaked out in an unrivalled erruption last week and then settled down to an extraordinary low level on the weekend, I thought jogging might keep them low. Jogging is torture. But at least you don't have to talk to anyone and there aren't any lycra clad gym bunnies around offending your touchy early morning sensibilities....
This is a test btw....my new site needs love and attention, it's getting little of the latter....
Horoscope Taps Girl on Shoulder
Saturday, 7 December 2002
It’s stop and cat vitamin c
go time. You've got one foot on the gas and one foot on the brakes. Self-control and restraint are major issues now. No question about it. This is a tough and frustrating period. Your every effort may be blocked. Specifically, you know what you want and you can't seem to get it because authorities, institutions, loud noise, parents, and males are standing in your way. Stop the car for a moment.
The Epic That Is My Life
Wednesday, 11 December 2002
It worked – this page is looking the way I wanted it to – Kristine (the fixer) even peeked in to check out her advice in motion! Huzzah! Now I can set up my archives pages a bit better and stuff. Last night my dad met me after work to give me some audio book tapes that I lent him and some free range eggs. He asked me if I wanted to get a cup of tea somewhere (coffee is yuck) and I pointed over the road at the fancy Italian café whose window I fog with cake lust most mornings. So we went in, and I suggested it would be fatherly of him to buy me a cake…so I finally scored a slab of the lemon curd tart that I have been making eyes at for days. I half-heartedly offered my dad some (he refused) then I inhaled deeply and it was gone *swoonworthy*. Yum.
My Blog Ate My Life
Thursday, 12 December 2002
Oh dear. I think this…actually, I know the page has been running my life for the past few weeks! It’s bad! I have been neglecting cats and M (though luckily he has his own boaty obsession) not to mention Crime Factory on which I am criminally behind…and my study…it’s a gaping void. It’s quite tragic. I’m starting to exist in a mire of guilt…and I’m having lunch with D of Crime Factory tomorrow and must be able to report good news. No sitting on the couch tonight (apologies to my eyeballs who have put up with a great deal over the past few months – lasers, drops, computer monitors…)
Dust Bunnies
Monday, 16 December 2002
Bleugh…am kind of functioning. The Meredith Music Festival ate my weekend – but in a nice (though very bloody hot and dusty) way! Sleater Kinney rocked my world, as did Bob Mould, Lisa Miller and the Adam Simmons Toy Band (I had never seen anyone do a solo with two rubber chickens before!) I heard Jon Spencer and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs – who both sounded very cool! But I was in my sleeping bag for the former and putting up the tent for the latter – this makes me sound very lame, I agree, but you must consider that it was sooooo hot! Like about 35 degrees Celsius and I drank much beer to combat it – thus feeling the need to sleep at about 10pm on Saturday night…tee hee hee.
The Rising Tide of Yule
Monday, 23 December 2002
Well…have cleaned every window inside and out. I think that some of them haven’t been done for a couple of years!! It’s much nicer now. Weekend of chaos – played a gig on Saturday night, it was such a long day, we hung around for about four hours before we were due to go on, and then the bass amp was quirky and it was all a bit of a debacle. Though two people that I know from where I’ve been working for the past two months turned up! (About two minutes after we’d finished, but still…it was so nice of them to come!) Then we headed back to M & R’s and drank too much to drive home and slept in their spare room…it was like being on holiday! In the morning I got the tour of the house and plants that I am looking after for a month beginning on Boxing Day. I am looking forward to it…subscribing myself to the theory that ‘a change is as good as a holiday’ – got my fingers crossed.
Eat & be Merry
Wednesday, 25 December 2002
Click the pic for the Lost Diva!
It’s over! The first time I have ever put on Christmas! It’s
8pm and everything is cleared away – we have unintentionally, but happily
acquired the rest of a bottle of champagne, a bottle of port, chocolates,
shortbread, a selection of beer from Mirboo North Brewery, blackberry jam that
my dad made and those are just for starters!! It was a lovely day – didn’t kick off too well – M did not respond well to gift as he hadn’t got me anything – we’d each bought a ticket to the Meredith Music Festival for each other but I thought I’d get him something extra. Anyway – I ignored his little hissyfit and we put on a yummy lunch. I made two salads (Huzzah!!) a potato salad and a bean salad, we ate a few dozen oysters and steamed mussels and then M cooked snapper steaks with asparagus, mushroom and blue cheese. To die for! We finished up with cheeses, cherries and a bowl of apricots from the man over the road. I made us Christmas Cocktails of Midori and Pinapple juice whizzed with ice in the blender – I even got my Dad to have one!
Box On!
Thursday, 26 December 2002
I am sitting here eating chocolates and sipping tea. Am rather content. Have just figured out how to get my background working – I’ve learnt that if you can’t solve something and are sitting surrounded by clumps of your own hair, it’s best to leave it for a few weeks and then tackle it again. I usually find I tackle it differently…and voila! I thought it was my css file that was doing the evilness but the background wasn’t working properly because I wasn’t uploading the images using the binary setting. I think this sounds geekier than I actually am…
Hot Hot Hot
Saturday, 28 December 2002
Today is the first day in the Collingwood house. Got here late last night and dragged everything out of the Humber into the hallway. Oooh! It’s like being on holiday! Wasn’t too scary in the night – I did wake up when the fridge whirred but apart from that I didn’t spend too long dwelling on axe murderers and the like. Have watered the back garden, put out a few grains of muesli for the little mouse that I saw in the garden last weekend and whacked my laptop on the kitchen table which has three skylights over head. Have hit 2,100 words and think I will put a word count up somewhere here in case anybody cares…
Cinerama
Monday, 30 December 2002
Besides being a cat supplements
rather excellent band, Cinerama is what I have been indulging in whilst suffering the heat and being on this side of town! In the last 24 hours I have seen three movies! I saw The Two Towers last night, which was totally cool and then today I ran away to the cinema - they have a special deal on Mondays where films before 4pm are $5. So I started at noon with Bowling for Columbine which basically just confirmed what I already thought about that great nation - the US of A - which is not to say that there aren't some kind of more normal cluey kind of people there (hi Mum, hi Scott, hi Uncle Richard) but that there are waaaaay too many freaky ones for me to cope with! Argh! Excellent film - everyone clapped at the end!
So after sitting there watching Michael Moore and eating a punnet of rasberries, I had a half hour break and ate another punnet of raspberries while I watched Donnie Darko. It kind of sucked. Sorry Claire - I know you liked this film but it just didn't do it for me - I wish that I'd seen Adaption, Harry Potter or Eight Femmes. Oh well - that will be next Monday night if I consider I have written enough words.
More Holidays Needed
Friday, 3 January 2003
All has been quiet since New Years Eve. A splendid night was had. We did not endeavour to do anything wondrous and wild, we just steamed a stack of mussels, ate a lot of salads and drank much red wine. There were six of us plus a baby sleeping in a port-a-cot in the next room and a good time was had by all. I spent the next day cleaning up, recovering from red wine and sleeping on and off. Quite catlike in fact. Yesterday morning was a great cause for depression – I realised that the 6th of January is actually this coming Monday. I had been under the impression that I had all of next week off work ( Not true. I can’t believe I have to go back in on Monday. Very sad.
Monday Morning
Monday, 6 January 2003
Yesterday I went to the beach here in Victoria for the first time in about 10 months or more – took my surfboard – and stood up on a couple of waves and then immediately fell straight back off. Lots of fun though!! Spent about three hours at the beach (for those people who don’t know about Melbourne – it has crap beaches, you have to drive for 90 minutes to get to a decent one, which is what we did) then of course we drove into Torquay to get fish and chips and ate them in the sun.
Monday Afternoon
Monday, 6 January 2003
Today has been a process of easing back into work, much less of a trauma than I had prepared myself for. I think when you have trouble sleeping it’s easy to lie there and work yourself up into a little lather of depression – it’s much better to get up and do something (like water the garden, feed the cats, search to no avail for breakfast food). Anyway, I share the room that I work in with two other people, O (a boy) and S (a girl) and we’re all round about the same age and are into a lot of the same things. John, our boss, is in an office nearby (one of those tiny poky rooms that professors get) and he came out to lunch with us today. We went to a regular haunt – Sahara – you can see some pix of it here and then we all professed a necessity for cake. And from thereon forward, we realised we had A Problem…
Poor Fishy R.I.P
Tuesday, 7 January 2003
He was floating sadly when I got in last night after seeing Adaption at the cinema (not as good as Being John Malkovich, but still…that was a vitamin b12 dogs
hard one to better). I scooped him up on one of those vegetable serving spoons that let the water run out but the carrots stay, and gave him a burial in the backyard. I did think of taking a photo of him as he lay on the spoon because he was very pretty – shiny black and defined with see through tail. But I thought that R would rather remember him swimming. Now I have to think of how to tell her in a way that doesn’t insinuate that I…
a) savagely beat her fish to death
b) blocked it’s gills with bits of weed and watched it drown
c) held it by the tail and let the other fish eat all the food
d) suffocated it by using too much hairspray too close to the tank
All of the above would be very bad. I don’t know why he died – and I can’t think of anything bad that I did. Maybe he just missed her more than the others (
\---end of fish saga---\
Jumble Jumble
Wednesday, 8 January 2003
Just a quick one. Should be studying!! Have got BlogAmp working on the side over there, which is cool. Also scored myself an ISSN number, which made me feel momentarily legitimate. Seem to supplement for dogs
have lost my background as a result of large scale tweaking - is top of my list to fix. Must depart. Dinner and thesis call. Am way over computer screens at this precise moment - all day and all of the night!!
Saga of the Blog
Friday, 10 January 2003
Oh god. What dramas!! What have I been sitting here doing for the past hour? I have been sitting here re-entering all my posts via copy and paste! Yes – every post for the past two months (thank god I haven’t been banging on any longer, I would have killed me!)
“But why?” you ask.
“Well,” I answer with a sigh, “I became unreasonably obsessed that [m i a o w] was not able to be seen from the US on occasion and also that none of my pings worked when I did a new post. Obviously the world was still turning for some people, but not for me. So I asked Martin – my most excellent server dude – whether it was because they’d taken my IP address away, because this was the only thing I could think of that would be causing this problem….
Tappity Tap, Hooray!
Saturday, 11 January 2003
Well, I did it! I hit 10,000 words and natural dog supplements
I'm half way. It's so late that I am almost drooling down my keyboard. I finished my ten thousand quite a few hours ago, but have been trying to get my blog back online and sorted out. If you're wondering why I'm bothering to write 10,000 words, it's for my masters thesis in writing, and also doubles as the start of my crime novel. Will it ever be finished?
A Very Warm Weekend
Sunday, 12 January 2003
A weekend of alcohol – really. This was dictated by the weather. Gorgeous – if you’re lucky enough to be sitting there with a G&T or Coopers Pale Ale, but unfortunate if you’re barrelling down to Kleins Perfumery in Brunswick Street looking for a present. Mmmm – I did both (well, the beer bit, not the gin bit). Yesterday we went to Wiss’s house to do a painting working bee – I worked hard drinking beer and finishing Boy George’s autobiography whilst everyone else painted and then dug into the worlds best bbq.
Going Down To Cow Town
Tuesday, 14 January 2003
Everytime I think I’m going to senior dog vitamin
be dragged over the coals for not pulling together my research into a cohesive lump, it seems to turn out OK (runs from room to find some wood to touch). So, aparently I am on track...at work that is...masters thesis is another matter [clutches head]. Hitting 10,000 words was bad - I am now crumpling in resolve - but on the plus side, after suffering through yesterday feeling like crap I have now again taken on human form. This is good. However, in my stupor I did forget to transfer a little segment of savings into my everyday account and thus have $5 to indulge in over the space of 48 hours. This is OK for I have a bike - no public transport costs - huzzah!
Grey AM / Sunny PM
Thursday, 16 January 2003
Went out to dinner last night with my dad and my faux-uncle Noel – they both spent the night heaping insults on each other whilst I ate my way through local mussels in broth with cheesy bread on the side then topped it off with a slice of Coffee Pistachio Cake. Well, they called it a slice, it was more like a small country – Noel ate a good chunk of it while I had a breather, then I finished it off. Then he got busted in the toilets stealing toilet paper. It seems my theory (previously unpublicised) that scavenging doesn’t end with your university degree (unless you studied law, medicine, marketing or dentistry). I have been living off about $10 this week and showed so much rapture in my first proper cup of Earl Grey Tea at the cafe that my dad took me over to the supermarket and bought me two packs of Twinings best.
LOTR – Slightly Skewed
Friday, 17 January 2003
The Straight Dope Message Board has an awesome thread going on where people are posting excerpts of Lord of the Rings as written by different authors. Here’s one:
“Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring!
I am too small to carry this thing!”
“I can not, will not hold the One.
You have a slim chance, but I have none.
I will not take it on a boat,
I will not take it across a moat.
I cannot take it under Moria,
that’s one thing I can’t do for ya.
I would not bring it into Mordor,
I would not make it to the border.”
-excerpt from Dr. Suess’s FOTR.
ROTFL…here’s ‘by’ Mickey Spillane….
Sleepy Eyed & Fish?
Sunday, 19 January 2003
OK, well, I illustrated in dog vitamins
my last post how my weekend was eaten and I'm just posting late this Sunday night to confirm that it was gulped. It is now about 11pm and I have been agonising over songs with my friend Dan - in the end we just thought 'Bugger it, we'll write our own.' So that's what we've been doing for the last four or five hours. This is all in honour of the gothy wedding *sigh* - hopefully it will go OK.
Have typed nothing, nada, nought and zero for more days than I want to think about. VirginBlue is having an air ticket special, which ends in an hour and I really want to get one - v.cheap!! Thirty three dollars to Sydney!! More bad news on the house-sitting front....
Canberra Burns :o(
Monday, 20 January 2003
Horrible nasty fires took out chunks of natural cat supplements
Canberra over the weekend and apparently the danger is still quite high. I walked out the back door today and the sky was clouded by smoke - it smells like a huge campfire. The smoke is coming from the alpine areas in the north east of Victoria. There is only about three kilometres of visibility in Melbourne at the moment - it's given me a sick feeling. So many people in Canberra have lost everything - there was nowhere near enough emergency services to deal with the fire - the ACT only had 12 fire tankers which were nowhere near enough - I don't know why they didn't have back up ready to come in from New South Wales. I'm working in risk and community safety - so I think some of us (probably not me) will be heading to Canberra in a few days time to see if we can find out what went wrong - or at least try and get some idea.
Evil Brother
Wednesday, 22 January 2003
Though I must castigate my brother on behalf of vitamin c for cats
all women, I feel compelled to be a little bit proud of his (slightly skewed) methods of ridding himself of the unwelcome attentions of a 20-something Swedish girl. (I know, I know, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there wondering what is wrong with him. He's 22 - that should explain it.) They had gone out a few times and his intrest had waned (the language barrier didn't help) and she had previously arranged to go back to Sweden for Christmas - so he heaves a sigh of relief...however...
[he writes]
I must admit I find this a combination of heartless and inventive *sigh* - must be off - am meeting the guy whose Nokia 5110 I just bought on ebay - apparently he's tall, and will be wearing a grey t-shirt? If his name was Clive Owen, my heart might have fluttered, but as it was, I just told him to look for a tall chick in a brown dress (mmm, hugely tantalising ;o)....
Having a Heatwave
Saturday, 25 January 2003
Oh man. It’s 40 degrees. Which is over 100 fahrenheit, I”m sure. Most people I know are watching the vitamins and minerals for dogs
Williams sisters play tennis on TV while clad in undies only. Can't breathe or move. Don't know whether I' prefer this or ice and snow. If I had a coupule of servants to serve me an endless selection of gin and tonics, or even an electric fan, I would feel better. Have to go to medieval murder party tonight - rang up to check whether it is still taking place. My friend Chris (in her undies) said that it's still going ahead. So I spent an hour making a cone hat with cardboard, silver doilies and fancy chiffon material that I got from the fabric shop yesterday. Unfortunately when I'd finished it - I realised I made it too tall - d'oh. However it is very rapunzel-like and will go very nicely with my...singlet. That's as medieval as I get in this weather. The wind is terrible and I feel terrible for the firefighters, I can't even imagine what it must be like. I'm feeling very urban and unhelpful.
God. I have made so many mistakes that I've had to fix up whilst writing this that I'm going to end it here. Good luck Venus. Good luck Serena.
Strung Out & Jaded
Tuesday, 28 January 2003
What a weekend! All the excitement of unbearable heat, coupled with a medieval murder party, followed by a naturalization ceremony and the barbeque to end all barbeques. I’m bloody exhausted. All that plus having to move out of Collingwood yesterday, thus foiling my plan to hit the Big Day Out *sigh*. Checked this page before and it didn’t exist, then five minutes later it’s reappeared…very suspicious. The murder party was v.cool! Chris wrote it all herself and I made a ‘cone hat’ – which is as near as 44 degrees would let me get to medieval. On Australia Day we arose (having slept about two hours in total because of the heat) and cruised out to Bundoora in the Humber – politicians were in attendance and there were at least 150 people there to be naturalized.
Exhaust-ed
Sunday, 2 February 2003
I have a distinct similarity to a boneless chicken (fans of the Goodies will know to what I refer). Am floppy for want of sleep. Just squeezed what was probably too much into my day and dragged friends with me to torture them too! Weekends are too short! Tried to do everything in too little time! Had a lovely drive to South Gippsland, bought honey, an indoor plant to sit on my window sill at work (oh- window sill makes it sound like I have a window well… I do if you discount the sad fact that all I can see out of it are grey bricks) and some beer from Mirboo North Brewery. Not the most illustrious and asthetically wondrous place, but then…it doesn’t need to be – it produces what it probably close to the worlds best beer. And it’s CHEAP!!! (But it’s only cheap if you go to the brewery itself, if you try to buy it at an inner city bottle shop, it will frighten your wallet).
Hoist the Eyelids
Tuesday, 4 February 2003
Ohhhh. Gym has played havoc with my waking life. Have been there just after six two mornings in buy dis dog vitamin
a row – still haven’t done any exercise, mind you, just had myself measured (shoulders, calves, thighs, hips, biceps, height, fat – feel like I’m going to be carved up for a Sunday roast) – this was all done by a guy who looked like the robot guy from Alien that gets ripped in half on the landing bay, but at the same time managed to remind me inescapably of the guy from Will & Grace. I think it was when he confided in me that he was the Ballroom Dancing Champion of Australia circa 1974…or was it when he described the physique of the guy who would be taking me through my program the first time?
He sighed wistfully, ‘I caught him in his little shorts practicing his body building poses – but… he’s engaged…’ Another sigh.
And She’s Made It To Friday!
Friday, 7 February 2003
I have not posted since Monday or something! Unforgivable! Have not been able to revel in my usual web surfing and the like as I have had work,work, work to do. Finally almost finished my weather report thing…I pray for it’s end every 30 minutes. Have been informed I am to go to Canberra next week for three days to do some bushfire research…this is kind of good and kind of scary. Haven’t been there before – though I have driven past the turnoff on the Hume Highway countless times – am staying by myself in a seedy hotel in the city. Hopefully not too seedsville – pray for the minibar – pray for the minibar. My boss is from Canberra so he’ll be staying with friends. I’m just going to have to talk the talk and wing it the best I can.
Afternoon Slump
Monday, 10 February 2003
Ug. Have post-lunch slump. Am drinking second coffee of the year, but am not feeling caffeinated yet. Happy Birthday to Claire who is Fascinating. I missed her celebrations on Saturday night due to drinking punch and dancing around a Brunswick lounge-room to the Buena Vista Social Club. Was sad because Claire and Co. were playing pool at the Marquis of Lorne – the pub I rode past every day when I was house sitting and thought it looked way cool (of course I was too much of a scaredy loser to go in by myself and have a beer, which is why I’m whinging now). Missed the last train and had to catch a taxi to the city where M’s friend from his current café of choice was spinning some vinyl. It was kind of fun – the girl who works in the café is about 23 and very pretty and thinks M is the biz – so I just smiled nicely, felt smug and drank several large gin and tonics (bought for me by M whose largesse towards me increased immeasurably when he saw that I wasn’t going to stage a catfight on his behalf). Got a lift home, thankfully. Had such a fun night…so fun that I was surprised by it! Had my first taste of Bombay Sapphire gin and now, of course, can never go back…I will forever regard Gordons, Vickers, Gilbeys, Beefeaters etc. with disdain (though this is probably not strictly true as I doubt I can afford a bottle of the best).
Reporting from Canberra
Wednesday, 12 February 2003
Am in the bush capital, and now that I’ve been driven all around it I understand the title. Canberra is very tree-ful (though I’m sure that’s making a few people nervous at the moment). As soon as I got off the plane I had to start calling all the people who said that they’d speak to me to set up times to talk. It was about this time that I started to wonder how I would be reimbursed for my millions of phonecalls – my boss suggested I tack a few hours on to my timesheet instead of trying to extort money for call costs. He is wise. First person I spoke to was from the RSPCA, which was very interesting – they didn’t lose many animals – about 2 dogs, a cat and some birds (whose cage was open, but they were probably overcome by smoke). They lost a building or two but had excellent volunteers who helped get the animals out – one woman had 38 cats in her house!! Which was fine, until her brothers house burned down and him and his family were evacuated and had to hang out there as well. Miaow!
Spasm Spasm
Friday, 14 February 2003
Back in cat food supplements
Melbourne. Got off plane only to run shrieking to the beauty salon having realised that whilst putting my bags in the compartments above people's heads on the plane that I would have greatly pleased the Wilderness Society for under my arms was old growth forest. Fine for ferals, but not fine for my swanky goth wedding bridesmaids attire. Then ran shrieking off to wedding rehearsal...walked an imaginary carpet for an hour or so and finally made it home. M worked last night and got in late. Something that I muttered at him as he went to bed (which I think might have been 'Holy crap I thought you were a burglar') seemed to spark a memory in his head. He then snuck from the room and rescued the flowers he'd hidden in his little shed all day and brought them in under the cover of darkness. Though, of course, it wasn't that dark. And then when I turned on the light and did smitten girly squealing it wasn't dark at all. I'm so easily pleased. The ultimate low-maintenance girlfriend.
Peace March & Matrimony
Monday, 17 February 2003
I have the post-wedding Monday morning blues, which are enhanced by the fact that I no longer have curly wedding-hair ( Such a lot of planning and it was over so quickly!!
From reports from other bridesmaids, this feeling is pervasive. *sigh* I managed to wangle Friday afternoon off (though no one here know’s that yet) and ducked to Brunswick Street where I bought a beautiful 5” high lamp in the shape of a crescent…oh dear. It sounds very lame, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say it’s divine. Well…it was divine until I tried to get it on a tram, and the wonderful wrapping paper job they did on it started looking shaky. Got M to come and pick me and it up. Once I’d got home I organised myself and then headed back out to the peace march outside the State Library. It was H-U-G-E. Absolutely packed.
M left early to go to dinner and I stood in the middle of Swanston Street for about another 90 minutes until we took our first steps. There were people backed up behind us and lining the street all the way up to at least the bridge near Flinders Street Station and Federation Square. It was quite extraordinary. Once we’d finally got moving (it was very slow going, but everybody was fairly jovial: though I must admit to having rather un-peaceful thoughts to the people with prams who continually ran over my feet; began plotting to send them all to America) I heard a band start up. That really gave the crowd a bit of a boost. I was wondering what band it was, and in my cynical fashion was thinking it would be some crappy band with more hairstyle than soul. However they sounded pretty cool – and when I reached the part of the street where they were (they were playing on the back of a truck) I got a shock! It was H-Block, (my ex-boyfriend’s band). They played a great set, and having always been a political band, I couldn’t think of anyone better to play on such an occasion. They rocked.
So then I walked all the rest of the way down to Fed Square on my ownsome, though did bump into David Wilson who was a great friend of mine in high school and I see him by accident every four years or so. Finally we got it together and swapped numbers – hooray! Then D & E found me, and we joined Claire and Jenelle at Pony and I drank a couple of gins before guilt overtook me and I dashed home on a train to pick up my car. Dropped off present at J’s house near St Kilda Botannical Gardens (where the wedding was to be) and headed to the bridesmaids/brides sleepover at Marie’s house. Didn’t get there til 11:30pm but I think people had more exciting things to think about than my lateness. Drank beer and watch a bit of Bridget Jone’s diary, then the three bridesmaids awoke at 7:30am to hit the salon at 9am. Oh my god. We were there for FIVE hours. We all took about an hour and a half each (make up and hair) poor (but very beautiful) Lisa was worked on for about three of those hours. She looked awesome (until she put on the dress, and that upped her description to incredible).
Then we all trooped back to Marie’s and waited around until just before it was time to go before all putting our dresses on. Then Lisa put her dress on and we all ooohed and ahhhed at it. Red satin. Totally decadent. Oh dear. I have to go – will finish the weekend later tonight. It’s five minutes to five!
It Rains!
Friday, 21 February 2003
)
Am going to have an after work drink with my friend E (and her boyfriend, who unfortunately works at the Bureau of Meteorology – it seems I cannot escape it), and then we’re off to see Chicago. I love Chicago – it was the major musical my school did when I was in about Year 9. I also saw it on stage here in Melbourne about three years ago, with Caroline O’Connor as Velma. I have heard the film is pretty kickass, though one review I read, referred (fairly hilariously) to Rene Zellweger looking like ‘a dancing chuppa-chup”. I’m assuming this is a reference to her non-existent body fat.
Morning Swim
Monday, 24 February 2003
Just got back from splashing in supplements for dogs
the sea - on a Monday morning before work! Wonders will never cease! Had such a hideous lack of sleep (very hot last night)that I had to go and do something out of the ordinary - woke up in an advanced state of grump. Now feeling much better, thankfully. Very social weekend *sigh* (that's the thesis sighing). Saw Chicago on Friday night. It was pretty cool, they really were very true to the stage script, Catherine Zeta Jones had sizzle-factor! Chuppa-chup girl was OK and Richard Gere was surprising.
Saturday M and I went and...PICKED UP MY CAR!! Oh yeah! The Humber is back! I have a sneaking suspicion that I will never be able to take it back to George Hall Auto because I will drive it in there and they will all vomit on sight. It apparently took up a lot of time (really - like about a MONTH??!) Mung took his car in there a day or two ago and had been primed to say, 'Oh, you've still got Beth's car?'
Which he did. And the mechanic confessed to crying over my car and their inability to fix it. This soothed my rage slightly. Mwah ha ha ha. I might be tempted to feel bad...if they'd Ever rung me. Huh.
So now the only other business that is stuffing me around is my savage dentist to whom I swore I would never return. Which would be true if he'd actually fixed my tooth; instead, yesterday when I was poking my tooth trying to remove a bit of museli that was stuck in it, I touched the bottom part of it a sent myself into orbit. Oh My. God. They'd forgotten (or were just too bloody slack) to do the filling right to the bottom of my tooth - so now I am too scared to touch it, because when I orbited it felt like the nerve had flopped out and had done a little tapdance. Yike.
Getting Back on Track?
Wednesday, 26 February 2003
Having had my tax done I am feeling slightly special and strangely together. I’m sure it will wear off. Have to address the scary tooth situation, but reading Shauna’s dental challenge has brought back the nutritional supplements for pets
horror of lying in The Chair. Even worse than the needle was when they 'tap' your teeth - their reason being that if they 'tap' on and then have to pry you from the ceiling, it probably needs to be looked at. Considering that I unintentionally did that to myself (via my fingernail) on the weekend I have now realised that I need to find a dentist that will trust me (ha-ha) and not look perplexed when I forbid them to touch that bit of my toof until I am whacked out of my head on whatever their dealer...sorry, medical supplies company has flogged them this week.
A Nice Day In
Tuesday, 4 March 2003
It is a lovely day to stay inside…at home that is. Being inside at work it could be any kind of bloody day and I wouldn’t know the difference. It’s wet. It reminds me of that piece of meteorological crumpet Donal MacIntyre – last Wednesday on the ABC his weather show dealt with rain. Of course, this means Donal must be glistening with precipitation throughout. He’s such a multi-faceted bloke – scuba diving under ice, hang gliding into the middle of a cloud; we were watching him do some insane kayaking;
M: Thats not him.
B: (bouncing in her seat) Yes, yes it is! Go Donal!
M: (rolls eyes) It’s a stunt kayaker.
B: No it isn’t. Look, look! *swoon*
M: Humph
I later discover that the crumpet’s brother is an Olympic kayaker and was standing just off camera ready to jump into action when his sibling took one too many rapids to the head. Which leads me to my own kayaking memory….
Anti-ci-pation
Wednesday, 5 March 2003
The thesis progresses, slowly. Working full time is not really helping things along. My essay is where I left it on the buy dis dog vitamin
weekend, about 300 words in. I have the dentist looming at me on Friday afternoon. Not the savage dentist, but Claire's dentist, reccommended for her qualities of kindness and love (not that these will help me once she levers my mouth open, but still....). ANYONE has got to be better than old Savagey-Forcep who, while sticking a needle into my gum, comments on how 'these haven't been taking too well lately'. So calming and thoughtful. Didn't have pancakes last night ( should have. Keep getting snippets news from my brother who is (name drop name drop) vamping about London with Ralph Fiennes step-daughter...I keep imagining situations like the one in Fawlty Towers, but instead of 'Don't mention the War' she'll be whispering savagely at him 'For gods sake don't mention Maid in Manhattan!'
A Horse is a Horse
Friday, 14 March 2003
There are strange and interesting things brewing in the life of the cat, but they may not be spoken (or typed) of at present for they are but brewing and may not occur at all. It is an obscene hour of the morning (or it was when I got up). Couldn’t sleep and got up before 6am to go to the gym – as usual I got dressed in my gym clothes, dithered around finding my water bottle, membership card, bike lock key and was so exhausted by this that I didn’t feel up to facing the harsh lights and pumping bodies of Footscray Swim World or whatever it’s called.
‘Never fear,’ I told my brain, which refused to stop whirring on the topic of brewing. ‘We will ride the gallant steed! I shall name it….Shogun!’
So I jumped on my bike and decided to go down and ride along the river. There are a cat food supplements
huge amount of trucks around at that time of morning and also, as Summer fades (to my disgust), it's getting much darker - in fact it was very dark.
This made my ride rather exciting because I couldn't see amazingly well...I think that local governments must consider it wonderful that they've put in bike paths, but lighting them is obviously way too hard. Anyway I hammered on for quite a while, until the track seemed to become some kind of excavation zone. It turned to gravel, and as I'd already trusted myself to the gods on the tarmac, riding over gravel in the dark might have been pushing it. I saw all these people in long skinny boats practicing their rowing. I crossed over a bridge and decided to ride back home to the caravan along the other side of the river.
Oh dear. It all started OK and I realised I was riding along the back of Flemington Racecourse and all the horses were being exercised over the fence to the left of the bike track (the river being to the right). So that was kind of nice, riding along and looking at the horses plodding along...I could see their shapes and hear them snuffling because it was still quite dark. Then the bike track ended and I turned off to the left over the horse exercising track and on to an oval. Well, sort of more like a place that they hadn't yet decided what to do with yet and my bike got stuck in the sand. It was when I got off I realised I was in the middle of the whole horse track surrounded by horses going around in circles *sigh*
This kind of thing hasn't happened to me since I drove my Humber into the middle of a tram depot and ended up surrounded by trams (I had invaded their home) and jeering drivers. At least at the moment my hair is blonde, which kind of excuses me a little bit. Oh god. I bought a heavy duty bike lock the other day and am very proud of it, but the way it attaches to my bike means it clanks against my pack-rack frame. So, there I was, at 6:30am, in semi-darkness, walking my clanking bike with it's little flashing bike light as horses and their exercise-people tried to avoid me as I skulked like an idiot down their track back toward the bike path. That would have been fine if horses didn't find a freak wheeling a clanking flashing thing a little off-putting. So then they started to kind of make those scared whinnying noises and pull away from their humans who had to try and quiet them down. I tried to skulk more silently, but the only way I could do this was by slowing down (which I really didn't want to do). Finally I made it to the bike path leaving chaos in my wake, found that the bike path didn't actually end but continued secretly through a gate and rode of grinning fixedly until I was out of sight (when I began rocking back and forth whilst moaning softly - quite hard while riding but I seemed to manage).
God knows what the rest of my day is going to be like. I have the fear.
The Secret’s Out
Friday, 28 March 2003
I bought a house! Yes – that’s up there on the stress ladder along with death and divorce. Not to mention that I couldn’t do things simply and actually buy a house in the state I currently reside in, no, I had to head north and find a Queensland house.
Here is a picture;
And another picture;
For those who don’t know, when you move to a different state in Australia, it’s kind of a big deal. The distance involved is the main issue. Now I’m moving not to the next state, but to the state after that. Hervey Bay, to be exact – right opposite Fraser Island near the beginning of the Whitsundays. Now here’s the scary part; it’s 1,870 kilometres away, which is equal to about 22 hours of driving.
The house needs some doing up, but is generally fine – the water is at the end of the street. It was pretty cheap, so we are hoping to just pretty it up and in doing so, increase it’s value. It’s all very exciting, but I was too scared to divulge anything until the owner had signed the contract of sale and the papers were at the solicitors. Of course I’m sure everything could still all fall through – the finance has to be sorted by the 4th of April, which to my horror, is a week today. But everything is in motion and all I can do is just push it along….
Goodbye Daylight Saving
Monday, 31 March 2003
M had a lovely birthday. All went according to plan. Left his present to kind of the last minute (i.e – put in the winning bid on a Makita Plunge Router just before lunch – thank you Ebay.com.au – and was running to pick it up at ten to six that night for birthday the following day) but all was well. Caught the ferry from Williamstown to St Kilda pier and had several friends waiting in the cafe at the end of the pier to yell ‘SUPRISE!’ which they did. Though it was v.funny when the ferry was nearing the pier as I suddenly spied D, Rie and Jack scuttling toward the cafe full pelt; I remarked gaily on the distance we had travelled while pointing behind us and M never saw a thing. Was lovely; got an awesome cake from the French Lettuce – the cake shop of my dreams and we presented it topped with a sparkler.
It is now official. Bidston Moss will be having two babies! One via Mung/Rachael and one via Christian/Meegan – it’s definitely the least labour intensive way for Christine and myself ;o)
Movie Posters
Friday, 11 April 2003
Tres Cool Site!
(I though you might like this, Cinematic Claire)
Rainy Sunday
Sunday, 13 April 2003
V.excited!! Got my birthday present early. A digital camera…HUZZAH!! M bought it for me yesterday and I naturally had to begin snapping everything…well almost everything. It’s awesome! On the way home from the shop yesterday (having sworn that I would spend no more money except for the movies that night) I was ensnared by a garage sale. And what a garage sale it was! I spent $50 of my phone bill money (that just happened to be in my purse) on two chairs…
I feel so decadent that I can plug my camera into my laptop and transfer pictures across! My camera is a Kodak CX4230 and it has a 3x optical zoom. I loooove it. This is what it looks like:
It’s splendid!
Winter Already?
Tuesday, 15 April 2003
Goddamn! It’s cold! (Not, obviously, compared to Siberia or somewhere like that, but compared to last Sunday…yike!)
Current Temperature: 14 C
Humidity: 53%
Pressure: 1024.1 hPa
Blame Canada
Thursday, 24 April 2003
Small brother of [m i a o w] took on Canada in a flying visit for three days at the start April. Now he is back in London, pining to escape, despite invitations to Greek islands and the like. Keep hauling in the pounds!!
All his pictures could be used as promotional ‘Come and Visit Canada’ postcards – they’re amazing! This one was the best…I made it into a thumbnail so this page doesn’t take even longer to load than it already does.
Twenty-Something?
Thursday, 1 May 2003
Tomorrow I am not a twenty-something anymore. I am THIRTY! Geez. If I’d been a true rock n’ roller I would have been dead at 27. I never considered being any other age than one that started with the number 2!! But, like I said to my boss today, the only thing I can do about it is be hit by a bus before 2:55pm tomorrow…so I should just roll with it, buy some more pseudo anti-aging products and start looking indulgently at all those kids who think that age 29 is a one-way ticket to nowhere!! (Apparently women feel more comfortable with themselves after they’ve turned thirty…I’ll say it again….thirty. So I have that to look forward to.) I have to admit that those of my friends who have turned thirty (most of them) haven’t changed in any obviously horrifying way. So yeah. With the stress of this week trickling slowly from my veins as it is replaced by the soothing liquids of red wine and Coopers Sparkling Ale bought for me by my boss who was trying to console me…I’m not feeling half bad!!
Sleepy Saturday
Saturday, 3 May 2003
What a night! Definitely the most excellent birthday party that I’ve had for a while! I decided not to worry about whether or not I managed to talk to everyone and instead gave up and meandered through the night… Here’s a picture of my sister and I with Mr Money Bear (so named as he arrived in a box from my dad with some cash taped to his paw).
My new camera worked over time last night! M showed Super-8 films, there was an open bar for the last hour and then all the hardcore revellers came back to the caravan to continue their fun. Dylan gave me a DVD of the new Bidston Moss clip for ‘Seven’, which is (we estimate) about 65% complete. So I showed that to everybody, and people said it looked cool – though there was some flack about the boys not being in it….but it was shot just as an experiment with the idea being that if it turned out OK we could use it for a clip…anyway…
It was an awesome night…am now feeling floppy, but not really hungover )
Let’s Play Catch-Up
Thursday, 8 May 2003
Jeez – I haven’t written since the weekend and just had Banjo Paterson in there propping me up. It’s Thursday already – almost a week from my birthday and life is whizzing by in a big fat blur! What to tell? I’m almost afraid to report on the lack of house dramas so far this week (though they do now want proof that I actually own Telstra shares). My fingers and toes are crossed. Hard. Oh! I survived a visit to the dentist! The new dentist (as opposed to the old and savage one) comes courtesy of Claire (who doesn’t blog anymore, so I can’t link to her). This dentist is a wonder! I have progressively become the most pathetic dental patient it is possible to imagine – the sound of the drill makes me cling to the ceiling. But Maria (the wonder-dentist) is very soothing and she even fixed up what the old savage dentist did without hurting me once! This is not to say I was not poised for hurt every minute that I was on the chair, but after successfully convincing her that I needed enough anaesthetic to fell a horse, all was well. (Though I couldn’t feel my left ear for a good four hours afterwards…but, no matter.)
Lost Weekend
Saturday, 17 May 2003
Last weekend kind of fell out of my life, even though I documented quite a bit of it with my camera. I had lunch with my mum (as the only one of her offspring currently in this state, it was my duty ;o) I also scored some splendid garage sale stuff. While we were out garage sale-ing we went and visited The Boat. Don’t know that I’ve mentioned The Boat much here, basically it’s the other woman in my life, M has been building The Boat for about the last three years. It’s a Farrier Trimaran, and is becoming more and more beautiful the nearer it gets to completion. M hasn’t been able to dote on it in his customary fashion of late due to real estate hell, so we go and say hello now and again.
It’s a little bit depressing that Boat is stuck on land, but it is exciting to think that we’ll be getting it up to Queensland and will have some of the best sailing in Australia right at our door step! I refer to Boat as Boat as a name cannot be agreed upon. We had decided on Velouria from the Pixies song of the same name, but everybody kept looking blank when we tried to explain *sigh* so now M is sticking with the Pixies theme and is barracking instead for SurfaRosa and I am going with my current favourite Seabiscuit (as I’m forbidden to make any play on the ‘tri’ theme, as in ‘Tri-umphant’ or ‘Trillian’).
Brain-Flag
Friday, 23 May 2003
Ugh. Crud. Working as a researcher is no fun when you are completely blocked as to what the hell you should be writing. I am only allowed to blog because I just cleared 100 words (yes….that’s all so far…and when I say ‘allowed’ I am referring to my awesome self imposed discipline…hee hee). Have brain flag due to this and also due to one of those nights where your sleep is thoroughly undermined by the person who shares your bed suddenly becoming convinced, at 4am, that you are a huge hungry spider about to pull out all his organs with your huge hairy fangs and goes into spasms, rendering you wide-eyed, alert and alarmed. After the spider incident I found sleep impossible (due to the vague feeling of just surviving an outbreak of major civil unrest) and ended up at work at 8am with great plans to produce vast tomes on…*sigh* weather and communication (will this project never end???)
Instead entertained self by emailing friends with excerpts from this page whilst rocking with silent giggles; and then emailing the street press about the upcoming Bidston Moss show at the Tote with Good Shirt on the 31st of May. It will be the last-show-before-Queensland, which is quite sad and odd. I also made A Nice Lie Down into mp3′s last night and uploaded them this morning – you will notice Yabby Pie featuring as a tune. People keep asking me ‘so is this the end of the band?’ It is so not the end of the band. The gigs will just be wider apart, but I really hope to organise some Brisbane shows and stuff. Maybe we will turn into more of a recording outfit than a gigging one. Anyway – I’ll be keeping an eagle eye on Virgin and Qantas specials!
Does anyone out there want to sell me a trailer with a cage? It seems that there are many trailers for sale without cages, but I not convinced that all my stuff will make it past Brisbane held on only by a tarp and a few occy straps.
It is currently noon and it is 12C degrees. I cannot even find the necessary adjectives to describe how cold it was this morning. Suffice to say that in the five or so months that he’s been gone, this morning was the first time that I’ve wondered why I let my brother take my woolly coat to the UK.
It is currently 18C degrees in Brisbane (add one more degree for Hervey Bay – 19C) and it is for this seven degree difference that I am willing to traverse vast distances.
Soup
Monday, 26 May 2003
Recently I have been casing various cafes and food halls in search of soup. One would assume that the pursuit of soup is quite a simple thing. One would be wrong. Not only is it hard to find soup, it’s even harder to find good soup. How can something so simple go so wrong? I have suffered the worst pumpkin soup I’ve ever imbibed* at Druids on Swanston Street, the second worst potato and leek soup at Stax Cafe nearby…the only halfway decent soup I have been able to find was at the Myer Food Hall!!
So this weekend, with no sleep and vomiting M (cause is either spider bite or flu? – either way, it’s bad) I decided to make my own soup. Scary stuff. But someone did comment that I should include recipes on [m i a o w] – so here’s one (but do not assume this is going to be a regular event…once I find a recipe that works, it’s all I cook for the next two years. M still blanches when I suggest a hokkien noodle stir-fry.)
3 huge potatoes, peeled and diced
2 leeks (don’t worry if you’ve never bought a leak before – I hadn’t)
1 onion
3 garlic cloves
4 cups of chicken stock
2 tablespoons of olive oil
How to make it into soup…
Slice leaks thinly using all of the white bit and also the bit where it’s just turning to green. Throw the rest on the compost (if you have one).
Slice onion very thinly, crush garlics.
Chuck your olive oil into a large saucepan and make it cover the base. Throw in the leaks, onion and garlic. Make them sweat. Stick a lid on the saucepan for 12 – 15 minutes and stir occasionally.
Peel and dice your potatos. Once the aforementioned 15 minutes are up, add the potatos and all of the chicken stock. Simmer until the potatos aren’t crunchy anymore. At this point you can either;
1) throw the whole lot into the blender and puree it (too much washing up afterwards, or;
2) attack the contents of the saucepan with a potato mashing implement and give it your best shot. Chunky soup is nicest anyway, so it doesn’t matter much.
Serve up. And as a secret ingredient, stir in a tablespoon of thickened cream to each bowl, and add some salt and pepper.
Tres spesh.
Working From Home
Monday, 26 May 2003
M was too sick for me to go to work today, I took him to the third doctor. It was so dark inside the house that I got in the car and took all the reading that I have to do for work down to Williamstown and got more reading done in the car in the sun than I usually get done all day at work. I think I’m light deprived. I am not, however, deprived of seagull attention.
You can see the pollution….bleugh.
Material Girl
Monday, 2 June 2003
Ugh. All I did at lunchtime was wander the shops and muse on thing after thing. I am obsessive. Last week it was finding the perfect diary (quickly gave up after wasting one lunchbreak – 2003 ones don’t exist anymore), today I ummmed and ahhed over which ‘Thank-you’ cards to buy to send to all the people who helped me with the house drama. Then I stumbled over black-cat hot water bottle covers, then I went to the bank machine and couldn’t get my card to fit back in my purse. So then I perused all the purses in Myer and David Jones….yes, I think my lunchbreak went for a little longer than my designated hour *sigh*
The gig at the Tote on Saturday night actually went a lot better than I thought. My mum came alone, much to my horror, so I had to make the band play Galore for her, as it’s our only real soft song. She called last night and said ‘I really liked that asian sounding one you played’ !!?? I also met up with the man behind the null device who I remembered seeing at one of our other shows ages back…it was so bizarre, it turns out that he works on the same floor as me in the next building! We probably get in the same lift every day! We’re going to meet up to swap cds sometime this week – he did a live recording of the gig that actually didn’t leave me gagging (this will be startling news to someone in I-Oh-Wah). There are some pix of the gig on the null device which aren’t too scary. It’s pretty nice to have a record of the show actually…
Camping Is My Life
Thursday, 3 July 2003
Yes, I have travelled 1878km or so to camp in a house that is twice the size of my old one ;o) Living in a bedsit situation is bearable, but the addition of two cats makes it even more..um…shall we say…interesting? They are being very good, and treat the window with the screen on it as Bird-TV – here they are on their first day:
I have also been informed that the educational establishment for which I work had not actually caught on to the fact that I’ve been working for them as a casual since October 2002. Apparently casual staff can work a total of four months fulltime and that’s it, so I have been (unknowingly) on a good thing. The good thing expired yesterday when I was told to take July off, but my boss has kindly arranged for me to still do some work in July, and I will add those hours to my timesheet in August. So I don’t really lose out, except that I won’t see cash for a while, so at present I’m deciding whether to fall into the warm embrace of Centrelink, look for work, roast a cat or sit it out.
Bad Me
Friday, 4 July 2003
A very unproductive day. My MOST unproductive day since The Move. Poor M is painting the ceilings of all the rooms as I type (minus the bedsit and the ‘spare room’ which is packed to the brim with everything we own i.e my clothes, books and cds) and I, the most un-proactive girl in the world, am sitting on my butt with my laptop in front of the TV.
The Points System
Tuesday, 8 July 2003
Well, I’m sure most of you agree that male/female relationships are run on the points system. I had always suspected it, but about four years ago I read an article in Men’s Health magazine that confirmed it (though I admit that the mention of Men’s Health could bring my theory into question as it’s such a hard hitting tome of truth). For those of you who have managed to overlook this, here’s an example;
Girl brings home video of Pride and Prejudice to watch.
Boy does one of the following;
a) Groans, laments the existence of Colin Firth, and departs to the pub = 0 points
b) Groans, and departs to the pub = 5 points
c) Says, ‘I love Pride and Prejudice but I’ve got a lot of work I need to do tonight – how about I buy you a bottle of wine and leave you to it?’ = 15 points
d) Makes dinner for the both of you, dims the lights and only gets moderately jealous when your breath visibly falters as Colin Firth comes dripping out of the lake in a transparent white shirt and breeches = 25 points plus kissing
So – M scored mega-points with me – actually about 39 points to be exact, when he whisked me away on a ‘date’ on Saturday. After ascertaining with a fair degree of suspicion whether I was going to get wet, cold or both (the answer was no) I began to ponder where I was going to be taken. Usually if something like this happens (and it’s not that often!) I have a sneaking suspicion that usually turns out to be correct, which does, I have to admit, detract from the surprise factor. Not this time! I got taken to a fancy lunch at what I think is the classiest and by far the most pretty restaurant in Hervey Bay. Oooh yeah!!
Thanks for the Fish
Thursday, 10 July 2003
I have to admit a deeper and more compassionate understanding of men and their obsession with Power Tools. I hate sanding, but I can imagine how much more I would hate it without a sander!! Hideous! This new understanding of mine also leads me to extend my appreciation of power tools to the next step: cordless power tools *drool*. Climbing up and down the ladder entangled in the sander extension cord is not my idea of fun. Can’t wait to get all the walls done…it seems to all take forever. I am so patient…NOT. The cat-home has also stalled for the past few days as M has been elsewhere working on his mother’s new granny flat. Yesterday he got back and proceeded to start work on the cat home and things spiralled downhill from there….
Yawny
Tuesday, 22 July 2003
Met my friend Lorraine and her husband for a hot chocolate today! The first person I’ve met up with here who isn’t a relative of M’s. Huzzah!! It was great to see a familiar face – though it does sound like I’m cranking out the cliches. They were just passing through Hervey Bay on their way up to Hinchinbrook…half their luck!
Still more paint dramas, but to temper my whinging, here is a paint success….
Oh, another thing I forgot to mention…my laptop…the light of my life, key of my existence…I have been contacted by the boys in blue. My laptop is hot. ARGH!! OK, so I bought it on ebay, but still…I’ve had it for almost a year and they just decide to sting the guy that sold it to me now? I have no idea of my legal standing but I’m going to scream loudly about giving it up. I’ve been instructed not to get rid of it as that will make me an accessory to passing on stolen goods…blahdee blah blah blah. Bugger.
Flying Down to Rio
Thursday, 24 July 2003
I am steadfastly ignoring the fact that I am harbouring a criminal (in the form of my laptop). Why I didn’t think a bit quicker and just say that it blew up and I sold it to an unknown person at a garage sale is beyond me. I have been kicking myself up and down the street as penance for my idiocy. Grrr.
It looks like I’ll be flying down to Melbourne in August for a work conference and the Bidston Moss cd launch (BM page is currently AWOL as I didn’t re-register it straightaway and now they are holding it for $100 ransom – they call it a ‘redemption period’ and they can kiss my arse. I’ll wait the 30 days ‘redemption’ and then get it for the usual $10 US – I’m sure the rest of the world is really going to be clamouring to register bidstonmoss.com..not.) M established that getting the boat and bringing it to Queensland is not a financial option at this stage, so it will stay sad and sorry in Williamstown in it’s little storage place ( Thus there is no reason for us both to drive down and blow about $600 on petrol (round trip). So all my records, the wheelbarrow, coffee table, clothes etc will have to find a home (that means “Hello Dad, can my stuff stay with you?”
So now I’m browsing the flights that are available – and of course at such short notice there are no Virgin mid-week cheapies available, and as usual, Qantas turn out to be better value. Humph. If anyone wants to offer me a bed while I’m in Melbourne, feel free…Christine has offered (after some blatant suggestion by moi), but I’m sure she’ll get sick of me after a while. It is a shame M can’t come, both in general and also because now Bidston Moss have to find a mixer. My brain hurts.
One I Prepared Earlier
Friday, 25 July 2003
This is where I was at about 4pm today – studiously avoiding all the work I’m supposed to be doing by means of a hot chocolate and a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich.
And last night, a new bug friend, discovered sitting on the ceiling centimetres from my paintbrush. So pretty.
Not Dead, Still Painting
Monday, 4 August 2003
It is an ungodly early hour and I have feigned sleep so that M, who has woken up way too early and decided to up the ante in the DIY stakes, has set his jaw and headed to the paint shop alone. As the van pulled out I jumped into my clothes, plugged in my poor laptop and got my email/blog fix. I think it’s just begun to hit home that I am leaving on Wednesday and he will be deprived of his partner in crime. I politely suggested a few days back that it would be perfectly fine to put me on the train to Brisbane from Maryborough, and that I’d be able to find my way from the station in Brisbane to the airport with my suitcase, laptop and guitar hanging off different bodily outcrops. For gods sake, I was just being polite! My intention, of course, was to have M say, ‘No way, I’ll drive the three and half hours into Brisbane and deposit you at the airport like a little piece of featherdown…you shan’t face it alone.’ But what he actually said was, ‘OK, that’s fine, that will make it heaps easier.’ Easier. For who?
Oh well, he is going to have to tackle the house while I’m toasting my toes in front of somebody’s heater in Melbourne. I got the new Bidston Moss and [bilby] cds in the mail last Thursday. My plan was to post a picture of me holding them jubilantly, however as I wasn’t able to do the final proof of them (having stupidly relocated) I found about four mistakes in total and instead wanted to impale myself on them and leak slowly to death. Maybe a slight over-reaction, but I was very frustrated and sad. I’m getting over it now – I’m hoping that they are only things the person who designed them will angst over. They might make it on to this page after all.
A Friend In Need
Wednesday, 6 August 2003
It was such relief yesterday to know that I had someone who wouldn’t mind at all when I arrived after a hell journey, let myself into their flat, and jumped into their bath. Bliss. Ellise is my heroine – she bought mueseli for me to eat, loose tea leaves and a special block of brie….how could you find a better freckly friend?
Yesterday went as follows;
Wake at 3am – too early.
Drift in and out of sleep til 4am – still too early.
Alarm goes off at 4:30am. B jumps out of bed and gets dressed in the loo so as not to disturb M too much and is more than commonly startled when M’s mother appears out of the blackness shrieking ‘It’s a quarter to five! You’re late! You’re late!’ Half naked, yet curiously calm, B explains that it’s actually half past four. M pulls himself from bed and gets dressed. Usually in situations such as this one he screams around trying not to run late, sighing and tapping his foot as B looks for socks, lipstick etcetera. Not this time. B realises M has chosen path of non-involvement. She is both resentful and thankful.
Bus station – 5:05am. The driver asks B for her train ticket. B looks blank. The driver realises B is one slice short of a loaf and instructs her to call train booking office. M is looking patently unconcerned. B is hyperventilating. Train booking office is closed til 6am. Driver tells B that all he can do is take her to Maryborough station and she can hope there’s a seat free. What else is there to do? Driver adds that B’s suitcase is way too heavy. B dwells on Ford Prefects observation that humans are in the habit of stating the bleeding obvious, kisses M goodbye and departs on bus, praying they’re will be a free seat on train.
Get to Maryborough West 20 minutes later. No mobile coverage. No change for phone. Nice station man calls booking office. Listen to hold music. Nice lady books poor B a seat on train to Brisbane. Relief. Train arrives, B gets on and is entranced by train-cam: a camera attached to the inside of the drivers compartment (you can tell it’s the inside, because occasionally you see a windscreen wiper sweep a bug off the windscreen) which not only shows what you’re going to see out of your window in two seconds time, it also tells you how fast the train is travelling, what the next station is and how many kilometres until you get to it. Just as B is getting tired of train-cam they put on Johnny English – the Rowan Atkinson/Natalie Imbruglia vehicle, which is, for the most part, largely crap, however for anyone on the train not wearing headphones it must have been quite odd being surrounded by a carriage full of people all laughing in unision ever fifteen minutes or so.
Arrive in Brisbane at 9:30am – it’s incredibly civilised. From the same station (switching now to first person) I am able to get another train straight out to the airport for $7.50. I am wildly impressed.
Kill two hours at airport with food, book and laptop. Get on plane at 1pm. I fly the plane with every fibre of my being all the way to Melbourne, where I land it with the power of my gritted teeth and clenched buttocks. Flying is not something I wholly enjoy.
Take one look at the remarkably blue sky and realise that my father is definitely going to be sailing and won’t be there to pick me up. Miss first Skybus while looking to see where VirginBlue have hidden my guitar. Get second Skybus into Spencer Street, which is where I begin falling toward hell. My suitcase (to state the obvious) is too heavy, and as well as this, has been designed for a midget – its handle that you grip in order to make it roll along is too low, and so I have to angle myself in a strange hunched manner, with my laptop on my back and my guitar in the other hand. It’s torture. I can only do twenty steps at a time before I have to stop and reorganise myself. Miraculously I finally make up to platform thirteen (naturally, it’s up a huge incline and is the furthest away – why doesn’t Spencer Street Station have LIFTS???!) and wait five minutes for a Sandringham train.
Get an SMS from M – am 50 metres off Fraser Island and just caught huge salmon. Hot. Sad. Because he put the work ‘sad’ in, I do not throw my phone against the cold, clinical train wall.
I get off at Windsor, where journey goes from fairly vile, to insupportable. By the time I’ve made it up the ramp with satan-suitcase I am totally depleted. I call a taxi. I get put on hold. I hang up. I start walking/staggering the two blocks to Ellise & Dave’s flat. I can’t do it. I finally see a taxi – I am so thankful that I give the guy ten bucks to take me a block and a half. Please god, let Ellise have remembered to leave the key out. She has. I fall into her flat, look in the mirror in her bathroom and see a country hick who has been sanding, painting, plastering and bucket-flushing for the past month and a half…I run to the phone and call my hairdresser…..she’s out of town.
Twenty minutes later I am at an Indian restaurant with father and sister, Noel and mother. My mother states; ‘So you’re not going to stay with me at all?’ in a vaguely accusatory manner. I explain that I’ll be staying with friends/sister that live closer to the city. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I want you to come over while you’re down here, because I need you to fix my printer.’
Ah, my mother – truly she has the tact of a free-falling house brick. After dinner is over I get dropped back to Ellise’s oasis and can’t help myself. I dive into her bath. Sonic the cat gets her paws wet playing with my toes. I get out, put the kettle on and Ellise gets home – it’s lovely to see her! We talk ’til eleven and then I reject her for my mattress on the floor. Sleep is my new friend.
Free Association
Friday, 8 August 2003
…and while I’m at it, I’ll try another weekly thingy….
From here
Country Roads….
Saturday, 9 August 2003
Am sitting wrapped in a doona in the lougeroom at my dad’s in South Gippsland. Oh, oh, OH! It is SO cold. This is despite some port, a large dinner and a woodburning heater! Well – it’s not so cold in here. Dad has a thermometer that tells you what it is both inside and out: inside it’s about 16 degrees (the other end of the room from the fire) and outside it’s a pleasant SIX degrees. Yike! Got back around 6pm from a long drive which took in the delights of Meeniyan, Fish Creek and Mirboo North (the great attraction of Mirboo being the tantalising Grand Ridge Brewery – previously mentioned here). We then consumed an excellent meal of ‘Chicken Proudley’ complimented by my excellent rice and my sisters excellent vegetables, topped off with ruhbarb and ice-cream. Am subsequently feeling rather round.
Had an AWESOME time last night at Festival Hall where Ellise and I saw Spearhead. They were amazing! It was an exciting way to remember one of the things about Melbourne that I like – good bands!! My brother is quite smug that he fell prey to the charm of Michael Franti a good while before I did…huh….these younger brothers…they’ve got to feel like they did something first.
I’ve been out of mobile phone range most of today, though an SMS from M did manage to slip through in which he crowed delightedly that the roosters on either side of our house appear to have dissolved into the ether. My fingers are crossed. Being back in the office is as wildly stimulating as it had always promised to be. The delights of the dryest possible fake-air environment with a non-existent view of the outside world have thrilled me since arrival. As did the email from Someone guilt-tripping me for my lack of email contact over the past two or three weeks. What can I say? Guilt rarely prompts me to respond effusively…if I don’t write, guess what? I don’t write!
Just because I blog, doesn’t mean I’m not BUSY. The conference I’m down for is for two days next week, followed by three nights of band practice, followed by the gig! I will heave a SIGH of relief when I’ve waded (hopefully with a measure of success) through all of that. I’m also going to try and get to some Melbourne Writers Festival sessions – there’s quite a sprinkling of interesting crime fiction stuff. Spoke to D who has set me up to interview a US author, so I have to crank my way through a couple of her books in the next two weeks…wonder if I’ll ever make it back north!?
Evasion
Monday, 18 August 2003
All the leaves are brown (…all the leaves are brown…)
And the sky is grey (…all the leaves are brown…)
I went for a walk (…all the leaves are brown…)
Tee hee. I can’t find the reference online, but I’ve seen this show on late at night a few times – it could very well have been Smack The Pony, but they had this woman recording California Dreaming, and instead of echoing the different lines, her backing singers just kept singing ‘…All the leaves are brown’. I am easily amused. Actually, it’s quite pathetic, but I was sitting here quietly crying laffing and laffing because I went and read more of what has to be one of my favourite sites… the wonderful Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. I had to print it out and send it to M in the hope it would make him giggle after punching so many nails into the floor. I don’t know why I cry when I laugh and laugh. It’s odd.
The last time it happened was when M rang to tell me of his latest method of circumventing his mothers cooking. She had apparently crumbed him some fish that she’d defrosted and whacked back in the fridge overnight. Anyone who knows M will be familiar with his pathological observation of use-by dates and his fear of *gasp* frozen food. So here was this fish, that embraced both phobias with a kind of breathless ease and his mum left it on the kitchen bench for him with instructions that he was to cook it up for his dinner as she had to go out to a meeting (she’s 82 – and seems to swing from near death to frighteningly efficient in the space of a few days).
Anyway, M told me that he heated up the pan with some butter and garlic and (probably wearing gloves) placed a bite-sized portion of fish in to cook. I am such an idiot that I thought he was going to say that he was going to try a little bit of it before cooking the lot to see if it was OK. Oh, sometimes I am dazzled by my own inanity. No – the bite-sized piece was the key to M’s elaborate subterfuge, with which he created the aroma of cooked fish. He then half rinsed the pan and put it in the sink (for added legitimacy) and then sneaked outside to the bin with all the fish wrapped up in a bag. But it was not to be…headlights swept the driveway as he crept toward the bin, and….actually, sorry. That bit’s a lie. He got to the bin, but it was empty, and M knew, that despite being short and 18 years away from a century old, his mother would see what he had done. So he had to hide the fish in the back of his van until the next day when (thankfully he remembered) he removed it and fed it to the two cats.
The final question remains; so what did he have for dinner?
A salad sandwich.
Do Do Do Run Run
Wednesday, 20 August 2003
Locked myself out of my office and am killing time in the student lounge place that I have always wondered about. I am due at a conference in about ten minutes and as I turned up first last time, I didn’t want to repeat the performance. I am looking forward to it – they have awesome food! Last night was my first free night since my arrival in Melbourne – it was great – I was at a loss at what to do with myself, so I turned off my phone, hunted down my mums bottle of duty free gin, made a gin lime and tonic, fixed her bloody printer and then read my book. No stamina – had to find my bed before ten o’clock! The shame, the shame.
Got up in the morning to be greeted by my mother who looks like a classic domestic violence case. She is the second person I know who has actually and truly walked into a door and given themselves a puffy eye. She looks like I drank too much gin and beat her up – yike! The other person who did this to themselves while living with me was Christine – her black eye was singularly impressive, I seem to remember her being fairly ambivalent at the time, as the pain of her eye was eclipsed by the pain of her hangover. My only black eye was from being kicked in the head at a Rancid gig and not noticing til the morning. D’oh. I must have been blonde at the time.
I response to Hippo’s comment about my music rant, I will make another music reference (oh, no btw, haven’t heard the Mogwai album – I’m assuming you recommend it?) I had a long talk with the excellent Chris Ioannides who does Bone Machine on PBS (actually we both used to share Bone Machine duties, a long while back) and he was pretty keen on Love of Diagrams, who are playing around Melbourne at the moment. I’m going to try and catch them if they’re playing anywhere before I head north again. I also probably bent his ear for far too long about my urge to firebomb PBS, or at least the station manager – and felt quite purged as a result ;o)
Goddamn it’s cold today – this weather is killing me!
Taxtic
Thursday, 21 August 2003
I had three years of tax done back in February when I had to make my money look pretty for the bank and today I got it done again for the 2003 financial year. I would be more self-congratulatory about my wondrous financial organisation and administrative skills, but really I only did it in the hope of getting a decent tax return. So my motives weren’t altogether pure. I also wanted to know if *sob* I could claim a new computer on tax. Apparently if I buy a $2000 computer I can claim it back over the next two years (most people claim it back over three years, but ‘my accountant’ tells me that my geek cred is high enough to claim it back quicker). So that’s cool…sort of. I’m not one of those people that gets kicks buying stuff to claim back on tax…it’s too long to wait!
Last night I had a bizarre phone call – my friend Hugh called up my mum to try and track me down. So odd. Haven’t seen Hugh for about five years and he just happens to call up while I’m actually staying at my parents place for about the first time in a million years. Apparently he’s been feeling like getting in touch with old friends since Tim Hemensley’s death about two weeks ago. So we’re going to catch up before I go – he’s obviously learned a lot from me – he’s playing bass and singing – got himself a band ;o) I always have to hassle Hugh, as he is a poet, so I made sure to ask him ‘Do you really sing, or do you just play bass and quote at length?’ He had a lovely rejoinder which entailed him telling me who was in his band. It turns out it’s the Dirty Three. That shut Beth up fairly conclusively. (I will hencefoth always try to castigate myself in the third person, it’s much more effective, I feel.)
Anyway, I googled and found one of Hugh’s poems written for the Dirty Three’s album Horse Stories…
Claire Cinematica Pt.1
Tuesday, 26 August 2003
Claire and I shook up the Nova last night for a long overdue upgrading of my cultural consciousness. We hit Trotters for our usual feasting frenzy and then went and saw Morvern Callar, which I reckon was pretty good. It could have actually continued a little bit longer than it did, but it was… oh, I don’t know. Claire is the Cinema Queen, I’m not good at describing movies, I work better with books. Speaking of books, we both bought a book each from the awesome book place near the Nova box office – not Borders, but the one that’s been there forever. Claire bought one that was relevant to her academic pursuits (i.e I can’t remember what it was called) and I got Script Girls, which I’m sure Lisa and Christine will want to borrow – there’s a copy left and it’s only $10 (reduced from $45 – ooh!). It discusses and documents female (mainly Hollywood) scriptwriters from around the 1930s to today…I’m keen! But I’m still plowing my way through my Elizabeth George – my train rides every day are helping me do lots of reading! I’m just worried about fitting anything more into my suitcase!
Seabiscuit
Saturday, 30 August 2003
I am baffled by coincidence. When I was in the US in 2000 I read a long article about the famouse racehorse Seabiscuit. I decided I loved the name Seabiscuit and it was then that I embarked on my grand campaign to convince M that it would be a good name for Boat. It was not until last night when I started watching Chinatown on video for the first time that I saw the name again; it’s when Jack Nicholson is reading the paper and Seabiscuit’s name is in the headline. So that was weird. Then (not having made it through the whole movie as I was tired and had had to stop to watch Spooks) I went to bed and was reading August 2003 Vanity Fair. I was only a quarter of the way through it and there was a big ad for a new movie, captioned ‘a long shot becomes a legend’ Seabiscuit. So that’s when my brain short-circuited on coincidence and began to fry. One sighting of it three years ago and then twice on the same day. Is someone trying to tell me something?
Actually Am Still Alive
Thursday, 11 September 2003
There have been rumours of my demise, which I am happy to quash. I am inhabiting planet Earth – just in a state heightened by turpentine fumes. It is 28 degrees up here today – the weather is amazing, but it is scaring me because it is only just Spring! Imagine what Summer is going to be like! *grimace* May have to lease out house to holidayers and escape down south. Just a thought. Am still painting skirting boards, though M has taken over the bulk of them, probably because of his opinion of my painting skills (yeah, so I painted a roomfull of skirting boards blue, forgetting that a few of them actually needed to be cream…banana cream to be exact). D’oh.
Met one of the neighbours earlier. One of the couple who’s main occupation seems to be screaming at their five kids. Not to mention their dog, which killed their pig….and a chicken…. etc. The woman seems quite nice, it’s just the man that I could happily kneecap, but am having more practical fantasies (as I don’t think I have the means or the method to kneecap someone) such as recording him screaming vile abuse and sending it to relevant authorities…or to something crap like A Current Affair (who would probably leap at it drooling).
The other thing is – I am being submerged by spam. I didn’t check my email for six days (which is some kind of record) and I had at least 350 spam mails begging me to; buy prescription medication online, enjoy the benefits of Viagra, give up my day job, develop a larger penis, get a better mortgage…etc. I put it down to having my email address on the bloody Crime Factory site. I think, that after five years or so, I am actually going to have to change my email address and just confess myself beaten ( I use Mailwasher religiously, but it’s beginning to take up too much time, going through all my email and deleting the spam stuff. Woe is moi.
Lazy Susan
Monday, 15 September 2003
I have just been given a Lazy Susan – one of those things that you seem to find most often in cheap Chinese restaurants – they sit in the middle of the table and spin so everyone gets a fair grab for the soy sauce. Hmm. Is this a turning point in my life? Is it a similar acheivement to finally getting a car that boasts intermittent wipers? Ah, it’s all irrelevent – I don’t actually have a table to put it on.
Aloha Brisbane Au Revoir
Tuesday, 23 September 2003
With no offence meant to any house-guests current or future, I am never driving to Brisbane to pick anyone up ever again. I will possibly even considering subsidising part of the train fare to Hervey Bay. We set out on Friday afternoon at about 3:30pm after a one of the classic pre-long car trip arguments (which always make for that great strained atmosphere for the first 200km *sigh*). After the first 200km we were forced to truce as we became entangled in the kind of traffic jam that I would assume has many people pulling out large chunks of hair. I was certainly pulling out mine – there were apparently brushfires along the Bruce Highway and that meant that about 20km worth of traffic had to crawl along at a snails pace for two and a half hours and be diverted by police down weird little roads for 23km until we could snake around back on to the highway.
There were quite a lot of cars who had overheated and/or run out of petrol and had to pull off the road. I was getting quite worried about the Humber, as its temperature gauge was on ‘Hot’ – but of course it didn’t have a problem at all. M used a bag full of pistachio shells as percussion an we sang and seethed in equal amounts.
Finally we made it to Brisbane and located the hotel – Ellise and Dave had just about given us up for dead and handed us a beer each and kindly let me rant for about ten minutes before dragging us out to get some food. The next day I had my opinion of Brisbane changed by walking and ferrying our way from Kangaroo Point to Southbank and the Westend and the Botannical Gardens. It was all so pretty and not at all crowded – it was quite extraordinary! On our walk along the river we saw a rock climbing club having an open day encouraging people to have a go at climbing the cliffs – of course M had to have a go… and went up the cliff at a rate that made me wonder if he was trying to escape me?
Later on (after gazing in wonder at the fake beach and everyone on it) we went to a wondrous cafe called the Three Monkeys and had coffees (I had hot malt milk – yum) and shared a slab of cake. We bought some supplies for a kickass curry and then made our way back to the hotel via a few ferries and the botannical garden…. here is the view from my room….
We headed home to Hervey Bay yesterday – it was a long hot drive and made it back just before dark. The cats were happy to see me! We introduced our first ever guests to the new couch and then Ellise and I sent the boys to the bottle shop while she cooked and I pretended to help. Here’s a pic of my study as it looks at present;
I am supposed to be working at the moment, so I will now disappear into the ether before anyone here realises that they could all be swimming instead of ‘letting me get my work done’. Oh the guilt.
She Swims By Sea
Friday, 26 September 2003
I swim. I have swum. Today I went to Toogoom and, as I did at this time last year, pranced about in the shallows sticking my toes in like a total pussycat. Everyone else was in – but it took me a good ten minutes to ease myself over my knees…then I just waited until I felt the urge to dive – and dive I did! Beautiful water! Satin and salty, with a tugging tide. I stayed in for a good 45 minutes and then ran on to the beach and up to the freshwater shower to douse off the salt. Topped it off by a beer in the Humber on the way home…I felt very good about living nearby – I can go there almost whenever I want!
We are anxious to find out where the best place to watch the Grand Final tomorrow. It’s the one AFL game that I make a big effort to watch every year – mostly I get some special sausages from Vic. Market and either cook them up at home or take them to a bbq. Last year we went to someone’s place where they were house sitting and got so inspired by the game that we went and played footy straight afterwards in the park and I almost broke my nose via a well placed Sherrin. No matter. Tomorrow I am a Victorian supporting the Pies in honour of my friend Jock – I definitely have not been here long enough barrick for Brisbane. So…we’ll probably be lynched if we go to a pub to watch the match, but one would think that there enough refugees from the Melbourne weather up here to keep us safe. I’ll keep you posted!
To Market To Market
Sunday, 28 September 2003
Despite the amount of beer that we drank yesterday in support of Collingwood, they did not emerge triumphant. It was a welcome surprise to find quite a few supporters in the pub, so we weren’t lynched when we cheered the occasional goal. Right at the moment we’ve all returned from the market, the boys are playing with M’s power tools, Ellise is baking a banana cake in the camp oven and I have just planted a few more things in the cat home – and can up my bitecount for my trouble. Fraser Island is currently house-guest destination of choice, so tomorrow they will be dropped at the barge and we will meet them over there on Tuesday for some four wheel driving. Finally I get to go to Fraser Island! Huzzah! (Instead of just looking at it longingly every time I turn into my street.)
Market Score:
3 tomato plants – $5
2 capsicum + 1 chive – $5
2 flowery odd bods – $2
1 hammer – $3
1 screwdriver with wooden handle – 50c
2 A3 sized framed water colours – $2
Me Vs. Fraser
Wednesday, 1 October 2003
I look at Fraser Island every time I turn into our street, but I had no idea (despite being told repeatedly) how much I was missing out on! Dave and Ellise went over on Monday and hiked for 10km to Lake Mackenzie…we picked up the 4WD that they were kind enough to hire and pick them up the next morning. This is the lake:
After seeing the lake and wading out into it, I didn’t really want to continue four wheel driving, because I was not convinced that we would see anything to match it! I haven’t, thus far, made a habit out of hanging out on tropical islands, but this is all due to change. We took the 4WD along the beach toward Eli Creek, which was pretty much equally astonishing, and on the way we saw the clearest rainforest stream that I have ever seen. In fact, I thought is was all silty, until I realised that I was seeing the bottom of it, not the actual water in it, which is pretty much invisible. Walking through the forest was rather humbling – the trees are sooooo big. They did, of course, log Fraser Island until it was turned into a World Heritage Site in 1992. Thank goodness.
Out house, to our shame (and secret, illicit pride) was built from Fraser Island Boxbrush and Satinay timbers, which are hardwood. They are so hard, that M cannot hammer a nail into the outside of the house, he has to pre-drill the hole, which lead us to wonder how the hell they built it in the first place, considering that power tools hadn’t been invented. We learnt that they built old Queenslander houses using the wood when it was still green and soft enough to hammer in the nails. Then the wood dries and hardens and…. thank goodness for power tools!
Lost at the Beach
Friday, 3 October 2003
Boys went out early and got yabbies to use for bait, in what was going to be their fishing for whiting extravaganza. They came back home to pick me up and we decided to swim first at the best beach (notice how I never mention it by name) and then fish later. But the beach was too nice to leave, so the guys decided to try their luck there. David was very persistent, and his bait was also very persistent in falling off/getting nibbled off the line.
Then we jumped under the outdoor shower and headed to the pub, which thoughtfully gave us all coolers with our stubbies of Vic. and sat in the sun. It was all almost too good. A lovely day to finish the visit. Noosa tomorrow.
Bye Bye 1st Houseguests
Sunday, 5 October 2003
I have discovered that a thing called a ‘jet venturi’ is what has been holding up my cleanliness. It sounds like a race of martians (‘Shhh, quiet! The Jet Venturi are on the march and can pick up the scent of human sweat at a range of three kilometres!’), however it’s actually a very necessary part of our water pump that has been missing. So now that this has been discovered, hopefully we will get our pump back tomorrow, and our one tap will have some pressure! M and I are feeling rather bereft, as our friends have deserted us for their own home back in Melbourne. We drove Dave to the bus yesterday in Noosa (and decided to take in the sights while we did so) – David treated us to a very awesome fish and chip lunch and then ice-creams; M and I felt like we were on a grand day out with our favourite uncle!
We waved a sad goodbye. David was very worried about who was going to sit next to him on the bus and the plane as he was (he volunteered this information, I did not choose to query him on it) rather aromatic after having a total of no showers in the two weeks he was here. We did swim a lot, so I suppose that counted for something. We drove home via the very pretty town of Pomona. Naturally had to top off a lovely day with a huge fight which left me storming through the streets where we live and M driving off to fume at the waters edge. Ah. It’s those kind of nights that you thank goodness you’ve moved into a house with a nicely appointed a spare bedroom. It makes for better reconciliations the next morning when you’ve both had a good nights sleep. When one person has had to slum it on the couch, I’m sure things don’t run nearly so smoothly.
Today was veg out day before getting stuck into renovating and doing all the work I haven’t been getting done in the last two weeks of general frivolity. We went back to our favourite beach, had a drink at the pub and then went to visit M’s mum, who we haven’t seen much of lately. About ten years ago she was a very keen caravanner and camper, who drove all over Australia with a little boat on the roof and a little four wheel drive on a trailer behind. Anyway, now at the age of 82, decent blokes are bit scarce, so when she saw an old bloke driving down the main street of Hervey Bay towing a well travelled looking caravan, she gave immediate chase. Hee hee. She didn’t catch him – don’t know whether that’s good or bad.
Rain, Cold & Trivia
Wednesday, 29 October 2003
Poor M, all alone in Queensland. Apparently the largest spider in known history is currently residing over the loungeroom doorway.
“Bigger than a frisbee!” gasps M down the phone, “and then there was this greasy black stubby venomous looking one in the letterbox that tried to eat me and then ran away.”
I’m not sure how you can look venomous, but Monday’s hangover would have brought me pretty near. Luckily I was able to exit work at lunchtime and kick back in bed with toast, tea and Harry Potter. I have been borrowing books from each lot of people that I’ve been staying with, and thus far they are:
Mung & Rachs House
How To Be Good – Nick Hornby
Ellise & Dave’s House
World of Chickens - Nick Earls
Chris & Jody’s
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K Rowling
I am totally absorbed by the Harry Potter ones – I’d only read the first two so far, so I’m furthering my education. (Not that my education was much use to me last night – we went to a pub trivia night and, despite having lots of fun (and Stella Artois) lost fairly convincingly).
The other thing about the last two places I’ve stayed in are the bits of my life that hang around in friends houses. And I’m not talking about paintings I’ve done for them, or photos I’ve sent; I mean the stuff that gets spread among people that you used to live in share houses with. At Ellises I did a double take at a few old bowls from my parents dinner set circa 1981. Then at Chris’s I stumbled over Saint Overboard! by Leslie Charteris that can seriously only be mine – I collect those books! Not to mention a lipstick, face powder and half a drumkit. It all makes me feel like I haven’t totally disappeared out of peoples lives, despite the geographical location of my current abode.
Home & Hosed
Sunday, 16 November 2003
I made it home on Friday all in one piece, despite carrying my little suitcase, bag with wheels and one of those large stripey (read ‘very unattractive’) bags with my printer in it. I staggered from station to Skybus to plane to station to station to station and finally found M, looking much browner, waiting for me with a big hug and an equally large…watermelon. What he’s done to the bathroom in my absence totally blows me away – it looks like it’s straight out of a magazine – expecially considering what it looked like to start with. I have spent at least half an hour just sitting in there because it’s so beautiful – the shower is cold, but up here, that doesn’t matter much.
I commanded M that we take Saturday off and go for and exploring drive in the van; we took in Torbanlea (where the local church ladies regaled us with the wonders that had been for sale at their stall ‘if only you’d got here earlier’ – they’d begun at 5am…hello??!) and then went on a tour of ‘Brooklyn’ – a amazing old queenlander in Howard. Seeing all the work they’d had to do made me feel slightly better about all the sanding, painting and gardening I’m yet to so. Kind of. Over scones we chatted to a couple who took the tour with us – they were from Newcastle, and M outdid himself by almost losing all his hard-won relationship points (bathroom) by asking me whether it was me he’d visited Newcastle with, because ‘it might have been my previous girlfriend’. Yeah. Right. Deduct 32 points. We then drove as far as Burrum and ate bread and guacamole while looking at this view.
After being in the last minute rush in the supermarket (they’re closed on Sunday here, which means you actually have to attempt being organised…) we headed home and M cooked killer curry (gourmeting his way back into my good books) half on our camp stove and then, when it ran out of gas, on a little fire outside. Then we watched O Brother Where Art Thou – which was excellent – particularly as I’ve been listening to the album a lot; it gave a lot of the songs a new meaning.
So after such a lovely day, today I have gone back to work, painting my doors, helping M make a dining table (which will hopefully be ready in time for the onslaught of relatives in [gulp] just over a week. Not that we don’t have a guest in the spare room at the moment – we do, but I won’t post a picture of it here because my brother (a certified arachnaphobe) would never visit me. Think frisbee.
Yawnsville
Wednesday, 19 November 2003
I am a bad-at-working-from-home person. Here I am blogging while all sorts of exciting things to do with bushfires await my attention. I’m supposed to be writing up the framework of an overview for this topic I’m working on. Is it emerging from my own personal ether? Nope. I have taken two showers today – I’m getting hot just sitting here at my desk surrounded by open windows. I have fears for my sanity once Summer kicks in for good. No sleep isn’t helping things – one thing about being away for three weeks, one gets used to sleeping on one’s own. Now I have to try and adjust to someone who goes to bed later than me, takes up more room than me, and – last night anyway – throws more half-asleep tanties than me.
The third time that the sheet was kicked off my legs last night I headed for the oasis – the SPARE ROOM. Fitting under a mosquito net is always easier on your own. But still – my bitecount is up due to the first half of the night and I have restrained myself from going and passing out for a few hours in the hope that after dinner I will fall into a nine hour dreamless slumber. (Unlike last night when in my dream I looked in the mirror and the bits of my eyeballs nearest to my nose were gone – they kind of looked gouged, although they didn’t hurt, they just felt dry. Actually, it was quite hideous – after that I was glad to wake up. Ick.)
Wet Green Tree Frog
Tuesday, 2 December 2003
Mae found a fat green tree frog sitting in the toilet bowl this morning. She was so enamoured by it that she carried it around with her for a little while before putting it outside the bathroom near the grey-water hose. A BIG improvement on the ever present cane-bloody-toads. M is currently taking great delight in feeding the magpies pumpkin. Maybe this is why I sometimes find one sitting in the back room on the table. Today my dinner was eaten by a bird – no pumpkin in my curry. Tweet.
Precipitation
Wednesday, 3 December 2003
It’s raining steadily, Mae is over on Fraser Island and M is above my head playing on the roof. He says he’s checking the gutters, but I’m completely convinced. I was going to make some lame reference to how it doesn’t seem to drizzle here it just buckets down and that’s what I like about it compared to Melbourne where drizzling is a specialty; but last night Melbourne had extreme downpours and flash floods, so my comments would not only be inappropriate but wrong. On the news they said:
So I had to call Chris and Jody to make sure they hadn’t drowned which they didn’t, only their car did. Chris was on her way back from a gig at the Espy and the car conked out (overcome by rain) in Collingwood. Their shop floor and kitchen were also flooded mostly by the melt from the stacks of golfball size hailstones that had built up outside the door. I’ll have to contact my Northcote friend Marg to make sure she is still intact as well. I know that Melbourne needs rain, but it could distribute it thoughtfully rather than just dumping it down on a whim. It’s really bucketing here now, and it’s soothing (except for my feeling that M is going to land on my head at any minute). I don’t think it’s rained during the day while I’ve been a resident here it’s only rained about four times in total in about five months (though I have been away for some of that time). It’s kind of exciting. The seedlings that I planted last night think it’s pretty good too.
Tomato Seedling [wiggling it's roots]: Oh it’s so lovely to be free of my punnet.
Nasturtium Seedling: I think this is what it’s supposed to be like when you’re lucky enough to get planted out. It rains everyday. Forever.
Lettuce Seedling: They told me at the shop that this is what life could be like. I’m 95% water and so is everything around me! Aaaah.
Beth: Remember this conversation when I forget to water you. Stop talking and concentrate on becoming salad material.
Wheels of Justice
Wednesday, 17 December 2003
What an exciting morning. M and I, the uber-neighbours, said that we would go with the lady-over-the-road to hold her hand while she gave evidence in court. The case involved the prior owner of our house, and the fact that whilst renting it out, she broke in and stole stuff from the tenants (I’m sure that I should be slotting in the word ‘allegedly’ somewhere, but I digress…) – as well as this she had kidnapped and dumped the other neighbours dog, lost custody of her daughter through neglect, and genrally abused everyone in the surrounding area. No wonder the kids that live nearby still walk on the other side of the road when they pass our place.
So we get to Maryborough Courthouse at 9:30am. It’s a beautiful building with a stunning view of the river and park. Luckily. Because we had to sit on the verandah and look at it for three hours. The freaky-woman in question turned up an hour late – I expected some demonic looking, malnourished harridan, but instead saw a plumpish, good looking, Samoan chick dressed in white and looking very together. She did give dagger looks to the lady-over-the-road, but apart from that there was no interaction. And after three hours of waiting we were told that we wouldn’t be required anyway. Argh!
Couldn’t believe it. M, naturally, suggested a coffee. In my trusting way I anticipated that lady-over-the-road would pay for our drinks, so I ordered a kickass iced mocha. No joy. We paid for our own beverages. Didn’t get a ‘sorry about all the hassle’ and got dropped home about 40 minutes later. Hmmmm. Not sure what to think. In an effort to diminish the illusion that the day was a total write off, I attacked a quarter of an acre with fierce determination (and the lawnmower). Update:We got given a bottle of red the next day, so now I feel evil.
In regard to the other, more karmic wheels of justice, my laptop is looking more and more possible. I am told I will get it on Friday. Do I trust them? I’d like to.
All Better Now
Friday, 19 December 2003
Just lost everything I’d typed in one of those freakish computer things where you hit a combination of keys and it taps dances, makes a cup of tea and wipes ten minutes of typing. It is indicative of my mood that I am not even remotely fazed.
After yesterdays spack about money, work, Christmas and being so far from home;the power drill essential to our kitchen dying; finding a new one in town and then realising that I’d left my credit card at home…(M played his role of tolerant comforter to the hilt…not even commenting when I blew my nose on the tea towel)…
) Began by moving all the boxes of stuff from Melbourne that are moldering in the carport (deluged by mice, cockroaches and cane toads) into the van. Then I am going to take it all to a storage place where they will charge me the quite astonishingly reasonable sum of $25 per month – and there are exciting things like sensor operated security cameras and boom gates that you can operate with a secret pin number. Thrilling.
As I was in the middle of transferring boxes, Bean called from overseas. He hasn’t been able to explore Dublin as he’s out of town and every time he’s tried to take off, they call and haul him back. Apparently this does not worry him at all as he’s charging them by the hour and then some. Plus the exorbitant Christmas bonus. Huh. So then I got disturbed by the little white car that delivers the post beeping at the front gate – there was a big Honeybone package full of WONDROUS BOOKS for my delectation!!! All hail the Honeybone!
Blacklist - Sara Paretsky
Lost Souls - Michael Collins
The Jury Must Die - Carol O’Connell
Candlemoth - Roger Jon Ellory
and…
A Question of Blood - Ian Rankin
(with Rebus played by John Hannah in my head)
Then Mung called and they are coming up to visit in March sometime, and he said that there may be enough money in the band account to put out the video clip to Seven. That would be spesh. Told him of all my computer woes and he told me how baby Luka was scone-d by a laptop falling from the overhead luggage compartment when they came back from Sydney (
On top of all this excitement, I spoke to the guy who is the computer agent for AAMI and asked him when my laptop would be arriving. He said that the couriers they use are notoriously secretive about their methods, but he had been able to extract from them that my laptop is currently on a McCafferty’s bus on the way to Hervey Bay – and if I go and meet the bus in town at around 4:30pm today, I can collect it!!! I can hardly breathe for joy! Freaky. Have got a lovely card from Lorraine (hello Lorraine…I lost your email address in the great computer debacle).
I have bubbled long enough. Back to the boxes. La la la la la la.
La La Laptop
Saturday, 20 December 2003
My laptop arrived yesterday, ten minutes before the bus station closed. It travelled by McCafferty’s coach from Brisbane. I couldn’t believe it had actually made it! I still can’t believe that I’m typing on it right now! Oh my god. It is soooo exquisite! I am smitten. Particularly because I was told that it was going to be a ‘R31′ ThinkPad model. I didn’t know what that was (as my last ‘killed by lightening’ ThinkPad was a ‘T20′). Anyway, I looked it up on the net and it looked OK to me – a little better than my T20 had been (it was a PIII-700 with a 12gig hard drive and 128MB). So I open the box when I got home. Freaking out, ’cause I’ve never had a brand new laptop before. And it’s actually a ‘R40′. Waaaay more kickass! I love it. And I have been tortured by not being able to stay home and play with it. But now I am.
WindowsXP is quite weird. It’s like having an operating system by Fisher Price toys. The ‘special IBM-preload restore function’ eats three gig of space before you’ve installed anything. So I don’t know how long I’m going to hold out before I start wiping stuff and tweaking, but at the moment I’m just happy getting it set up the way I want. No more M’s computer taking over my desk with it’s big fat monitor. Eating twelve oysters and some prawns today helped my disposition as well. Am getting up early to go 4WD with M’s nephew (who is older than moi – LOL). When I am feeling more depressed and evilly inclined I will write about the impending destruction of Toogoom. Alan bloody Border.
Dirt & Dust
Monday, 22 December 2003
Went four wheel driving yesterday – it was very rugged and very hot. Lots of fun though. We only knew the couple that we went with, but everyone was nice. I forgot how cool CB radios are.
Christmas Day
Thursday, 25 December 2003
La la la la. M and I barely slept. Too hot. Too many mozzies. Would be easy to be grumpy, but we got an early morning call from Christian, Meegan and Finn to perk us up, and then we called and carolled at other answering machines and friends. More later on. Am making lolly bags for all the people who will be at M’s mother’s place today – and true to our promise, we have purchased a bottle of gin and two bottles of tonic and some lime. I think it will be the antidote to our lack of sleep and excess of perspiration.
You can find me on my mobile…..Bean, I’ll call you later tonight so I catch you when our Christmas days collide.
Happy New Year
Thursday, 1 January 2004
A grand night was had – many prawns eaten, many Illusions drunk. Lollies, pistachios….the oysters bigger than my head were the only downer. They were terrible. We got remembered by lots of people – my phone got lots of text messages that all said the same thing…’Get a haircut’. I lie. I have been texting people back this morning, and this makes it sound simple. But in actual fact I have to have my phone positioned halfway out the second window from the wall in my study to make the messages go.
At midnight last night we crept outside to see what would happen. We weren’t let down. True to our expectations, their were boat flares fired instead of fireworks, shotguns firing instead of, um, fireworks and that was about it! This all sounds rather disfunctional – but M and I had a lovely night; didn’t get stuck anywhere unable to get a taxi home, didn’t have to grit our teeth and mingle with the neighbours and didn’t get throttled by semi-naked senior citizens inebriated by too much trifle. Hope everyone had a lovely New Years, except for you Tom – I anticipate as part of your karmic retribution you would have been scouring London for a lift home, or passed out in a club somewhere having been trampled by members of the Fiennes family.
Sunday & Sleepless
Sunday, 4 January 2004
Returned from market carrying pots of lemongrass, marjoram, thai coriander, pink and yellow blobby flowers, mint and thyme. Plus a watermelon, some plums and some mushrooms. Nagchampa incense and a bag of curry spice mix. Bought some v.light cotton trousers and a singlet with my $30 voucher courtesy of M’s mother (who only gave him some $10 shorts – he’s still in therapy). Am hoping trousers will stop some of the biting that goes on under my desk – yes I do still have a few square inches of untrammelled flesh. Somewhere.
Engaged!
Thursday, 8 January 2004
To Move is To Sweat
Saturday, 10 January 2004
It’s got a bit better now (6pm) but today I had to go and shelter in the library. Then the supermarket. The rest of the day I spent reading The Weekend Australian – Review on the couch, positioned directly in front of the fan. The heat doesn’t really worry M that much, but once the humidity gets past a certain point, it’s all over for me.
A Bit Wet
Friday, 16 January 2004
It rained last night. It also rained this morning. But still the water in the bottom of the two little dams out the back was only a few inches deep. Then we went to Hell …sorry…Bunnings…and there was a fair bit more rain. Due to the nature of Bunnings we did not return home for at least three hours. The dams had overflowed. More than that, they had developed their own dinky rapids, plus a picturesque kind of minor river system that navigated the clothesline.
The Weekend
Tuesday, 27 January 2004
Besides being the name of an unusually cool band, the weekend that has just past was full of wonder, delight and a weird flu-bug that killed me off at the end.
Friday night was the wondrous Crime-Book Grab!! I filled a box. It was spectacular! I was rather self-conscious about the amount of books that I managed to grab – but, to be honest, it was a mere trifle of what I could have jumped on. However I was limited by politeness, my lack of upper body strength and probably restrictions on my luggage on the way home.
Went shopping for my Christmas present with my mum. She bought three things…for her. I was so swamped by choice after living in the land of Op-Shop for so long, that I didn’t get anything, and decided the dosh would be better spent on an frivolously expensive haircut. Then ran from my mums place to Dave and Ellise’s awesomely impressive new house (two houses away). They can see the sea from their bedroom. Amazing. Saw my little Sonic cat who had come off quite badly in an encounter with a fox a few weeks previously – but has lived to see another day…
Headed out on the town with D & E and drank copious shandies for most of the night. We ended up in Balaclava – which was so exciting for me, as I was about five minutes from home. Huzzah! Woke up in the morning and felt fine, but then slowly succumbed to some weird, nauseous, sweaty flu thing (no – not a hangover). Stayed in bed the entire day feeling vile. Got up to got for dinner at the Gibson-Roys; who were astonished at my lack of alcoholism – I drank water. Had a lovely night and drove home with a sick bag within grabbing distance (this has no reflection on the dinner, because it was gourmet). Stayed in bed for most of Australia Day. Ate six grapes and some chicken soup – not for my soul either. Now am at work feeling marginally improved. Haven’t heard if anyone saw the BM clip on RAGE on Friday night. But I looked it up on the website and it was on!
Winding Up
Thursday, 5 February 2004
Work drinks last night at Cookie. Followed by a sublime dinner at Chez Phat. Jeez – I’m feeling dunked in inner-city cool. Get me back to Hervey Bay! (with olive dip in hand). Actually last night was far more suited to my brother, bar slut from way back, currently destitute in London after quitting his job for a better one, which then fell through. I may have to set up a ‘Fund For Starving Brother’ on this site if he doesn’t find work soon. Fingers crossed. Or, as they say in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, ‘stand on your toe’.
Am very much looking forward to going home to lovely Hervey Bay house – M and I get a couple of days to ourselves and then we have the first of three lots of visitors!! Our spare room isn’t going to know what hit it! I am very glad we have one. However I have just checked my horoscope (because I just have nothing else I’m supposed to be doing….yeah right) and it does not bode well for my arrival back into the nest. Get this:
Taurus (me)
Friday February 6th
A Red Rag in the Casa del Toro? The Full Moon in Leo at 19.48 could trigger a fast but deep sense of crisis in your Domestic Reality sector. There could be a sense that something is not working or someone is just not working out. Wait a day before making decisions.
Aries (him)
Friday February 6th
The phone won’t ring? The love note won’t arrive? You are locked, this evening, in a classic Full Moon in the 5th house scenario, when everything associated with your romantic love life seems to be in crisis. It’s worth riding out without burning too many bridges.
I have the fear. Bloody Mystic Medusa.
Welcome Home Me!
Saturday, 7 February 2004
After living in a house that I never wanted to come home to after spending time away, coming home to the house-in-progress is bliss. Was greeted joyfully by sandflies and M who had cleaned the house to within an inch of its life, bought me flowers and *gasp* had even defrosted the fridge – which had been resembling the polar ice cap for the past two months.
It seems longer than two days ago that I drove my mother and I to the airport to collect my little Nan, who had travelled from the US to New Zealand on the QE2 and then flown into Melbourne. Apparently there are many fat, over dressed, whiny people on the QE2 – a revelation that didn’t really surprise me too much. So I got to catch up with my Nan over dinner, and then leave at 5:45am in the morning with all the loot she brought me (endless supplies of makeup, Burts Bees stuff and a bottle of Glamorous by Ralph Lauren). So I left tired, but smelling delicious. In the throes of my gratitude I also left her some of my new books to read…thank god my mother lent me another case to get all my stuff home. I went from being the world’s lightest traveller to burdened mule-girl in just over two weeks.
Oh man, I’m glad to be home!
Slump
Monday, 9 February 2004
OK, my euphoria at coming home has been quashed by 18 mosquito and sandfly bites, large amounts of humidity and M playing Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. He is possessed by finishing off the kitchen, the proximity of his family and (I suspect) my interuption of his bachelor life. Nevertheless, he continues to make me pesto – so I am valiantly playing the role of tolerant princess. Dylan and Rachael arrive tomorrow afternoon, which is going to be cool – although I have to have a serious chunk of work done by the end of the week and this might detract from my ‘hostessing’ abilities.
I bit the bullet today and bought THIRTY mosquito coils and a LARGE bottle of tropical strength Aeroguard. Once my next payday ticks around I will also invest in some mega-strength Vitamin B (even though I can find no scientific research that upholds the general agreement that mosquitos stay away from B-junkies). Every little bit helps.
Before I left (just now on three weeks ago) I planted some corn seedlings and some sunflower seeds. They are now both higher than my knees – a product of the huge amount of rain that happened in my absence. Go corn! I continue to plot my revenge on the bastard shutupandstopit next door. I now have M’s permission, once the house is sold, to drive past the front of their house and scream ‘WAYNE – shut the gate you useless f****** c***!’ Which is only a tiny fragment of what I heard him scream at the mother of his children this morning at…oh, about 8am this morning. But I am still tempted to record him in full flight and play it loudly over the fence at opportune moments…hum. Might have to get my blackbelt beforehand.
Just Queer
Wednesday, 11 February 2004
It’s 9pm. Humidity is at 80%. I want to move south. Quite soon. Tomorrow in fact. However our latest visitors are kind of liking the weather and are feeling holiday-like, so I am trying to curb my weather-related whining. Gah. Here are the visitors out the back.
Earlier today M’s mother rang to see if one of us could take her to the doctor. I had to work all day, so M went along. So they’re in the waiting room at the medical centre and M’s mother starts telling him about this TV show she watched last night at my urging. She was agog.
“I didn’t know B was into that kind of television show! There were men with men. There was a man with a ten inch…thingy…and they were throwing quoits over it! There was a woman there too. But she turned out to be a man as well…”
By this point M was torn between gagging and having hysterics. I’d told her to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and she’d stumbled on Queer As Folk. That improved my day considerably!
5am
Friday, 13 February 2004
That’s what time I got up this morning. It was actually cool. Bliss. Will now have to go to bed at about 8pm, but it was worth it. Our guests have been unbelievably nice to us and yesterday hired jetskis for us to have a go on. M and I had one and they shared the other. The jetskis were brand new (as the hire lady kept reminding us). I’ve never been into jetskis – they look like fun but they’re kind of noisy and it seems like a surfeit of idiots use them at the expense of other peoples more laid back beach fun. Anyway – there was no one at the beach so I didn’t feel so bad. I jumped on first and M rode pillion.
Weeeeehoooh! WAAAAHOOOOO!
I went up to 80km an hour and M was hanging on for his life. It was a total buzz! We zipped up and down and up and down, jumped little waves – M had to try some semi-burn outs (or the water based equivalent). Then last night we got taken out to dinner – for the second time (and as someone who has only been out to dinner in Hervey Bay twice in six months, this is a major thrill) and we all tried some deep fried Tasmanian brie. As an entree…which was a mistake. It was pretty nice – but I think I prefer it normal on dry biscuits.
Dylan is majorly into his polaroid cameras and there are pictures of everything being spat out of different cameras – my scanner is in storage or I’d be putting some of them up here. I do have some photos of the new kitchen (I know this is not exciting for normal people, but we’ve been cooking on a single burner camp stove since June) but I won’t bore you. Must get back to the fascination of arson. That was sarcastic, in case you were wondering.
BiteCount
Tuesday, 17 February 2004
Those of you who keep an eye on my bitecount over there on the left hand side of the page, will have noticed that it has only ever hit about 25 or 26 when my bites have been super bad. Unfortunately, one of the things that Dylan has done while visiting us up here has been to render my bitecount laughable. He currently has 70 – seventy – bites – resulting from a badly positioned mozzie net on the second night of his stay. So I hereby bestow upon him the title of BiteKing and I bow to his superior bitedom.
Bye Bye HG No.4
Wednesday, 18 February 2004
House guests No.4 departed this morning and we were v.sorry to see them go – we had an awesome week! It was fated that M’s power saw broke the day they got here so he wasn’t able to do all the work that is sitting there waiting for him – instead we went swimming every day, my work hours became more and more ‘flexible’ and I had other people around to whinge about the heat with and compare bites. M and I got taken out to dinner every night and almost died with delight. And in regard to the bitecount – sandflies got in the mozzie net last night and bit the crap out of me – so now Dylan has a little bit more competition.
She’s Finally Lost It
Friday, 20 February 2004
Summer’s heat is unrequited
Lying on the floor, I’m blighted…
Struck down by degrees
Gothy friend arriving later
And we fondly anti-ci-pate her
Tilt training toward her sweltery fate…er…
Small white Melbourne knees
Up this morning while it’s cooler
Dreaming of a swimming pool, her
Grecian name is prob’ly Toula
Feed me olives please
My newest friend has a rotation
Blessed be its mechanation (?!)
Three whole speeds of operation
Elcon Fan of Glee.
Whirring silent almost nightly
While the sandflies bite me bite me
Stirring air that’s sticking tightly
I sleep and dream of brie.
Up To Date
Monday, 23 February 2004
Well I am an idiot. Lisa did not arrive until yesterday. We cleaned up the house on Friday and it was only a complete fluke that I SMS-ed her to see how her ‘trip up’ was going: a message that was responded to by a phone call with her shrieking ‘I’m not coming ’til Sunday. SUNDAY!!‘ So then we had the difficult task of trying to keep the bathroom clean for two days so we didn’t have to do it again, try not to drink all the beer and eat all the TimTams. (Tangent: as the TimTams were the new ‘Kahlua’ flavour or whatever the fuss has been about, it wasn’t hard as they smell much better than they taste, sadly.)
So she finally showed up yesterday – two hours late as the Tilt Train had to only travel at 60km per hour due to the extreme heat and threat of the train tracks buckling. Yike.
Picked up a new hard drive so we can try and get some recording done soon – huzzah from what looked like a disused shopfront in Maryborough. It’s actually a huge place filled with a million computer bits that is solely dedicated to trading on Ebay – which I thought was pretty nifty.
It is thundering off and on now and there is a HUGE storm that has just brushed by us – with lots of lightening visible fairly far away. M has run out and kamikazed quite a lot of his basil plants (apparently if you chop their tops off, they grow wider and bushier). So now our blender is full to the top of pesto and Lisa and I are skidding in our own drool. I think I’m going to have to look in to the viability of freezing pesto…right now!
Weather
Thursday, 26 February 2004
Am still busy playing hostess. After rampantly consuming large amounts of white wine with the very gourmet risotto that Lisa and created, we got up slightly groggily yesterday morning and Drove with M to Rainbow Beach, via Tin Can Bay and Poona. Spent lots of time enjoying the waves at Rainbow Beach – I stood up on my surfboard for seconds at a time (-just call me Layne) – Lisa got her pale gothic skin a lovely shade of British Tourist Red and we also investigated Inskip Point.
After another swim we headed back to Maryborough and had our own personal lightening show on the way. Here is a biblical looking weather moment:
[photo by lisa]
When we got into town every light in Maryborough was out! We headed to the pub, as we were early for our dinner reservation and the barman had one torch, which was complicated by Lisa and I asking for shandys… We sat on the balcony of the pub and watch the light show for a while and then headed to the Muddy Waters Cafe – just as we got there the street lights popped back on – they’d hooked up a generator, but were way behind in their schedule, so I rang through to a Hervey Bay restaurant who told me that lights were still out all over Hervey Bay and that if lights were on in Maryborough we should stay there. So we did. Lisa treated us to a lovely dinner and we drove home tired and floppy from sea and sun. I was so buggered that I didn’t hear it pour down during the night, but our little creek is running this morning, and the water tank is overflowing.
Early Early
Friday, 27 February 2004
It’s 4am. Got woken by the most godawful cat fight – and as nothing can get into the cat home, I’m assuming that something passed close by – and both the cats endeavoured to let whatever it was know that it should never pass their way again. M proved again that if he had offspring their bad dreams would go unattended (how can anyone sleep through the noise of two cats feigning violent prolonged deaths?) waking only afterwards to say pettishly ‘Well you heard them – if you think that they’re OK and shouldn’t be checked on…’
…meaning…’Heartless cow, just because you can see one of them stalking up and down by torchlight through the bedroom window, doesn’t mean that the other one isn’t lying there bleeding quietly…’ So I lay in bed for another hour, guiltridden. Dwelling on heading out the to cathome, leapfrogging cane-toads, and deciding against it. Daylight will reveal all.
With all my ‘hostessing’ I’ve actually just been using my computer for working and not catching up on my regular blog reads! I’d been missing my fix over at missjenjens and discovered that she was no longer in residence there. I assumed that her move to Sydney may have prompted a blogging hiatus. But no. While checking up whether Gianna’s baby had arrived I noticed a post (just prior to the birth) about missjenjen having got the boot from her workplace as her blog had been discovered. Too bad she’d already resigned – mwah ha ha ha. So if you’re out there missjenjen, remember that truth is the response to all cries of ‘defamation’ (that’s the only thing I remember from my degree – Arts – obviously) and from the sound of the many people that blighted you at the office, they’ll only have benefitted from the insights that your blog was kind enough to give them ;o)
Hostess Twinkie
Wednesday, 3 March 2004
We have a baby in the house. For the most part he’s very good and doesn’t take up too much room ;o) He hasn’t really had a screaming fit or done too much projectile vomiting. The fact that he’s very cute is also in his favour. (although Mung said that this picture makes him look like a little podge….)
In spite of all the attention Luka needs, Mung and Rach are very relaxed with him and we’ve hit the beach twice, went to Maryborough yesterday and today I’m working (can’t you tell?) and they’ve taken off in the van to go exploring. Poor M is going to be sad when they go, and then I desert him a day later. Fraser Island is possible for tomorrows Grand Day Out. Tonight Rach may be making a chocolate self saucing pudding – and if it turns out well, I may actually just keep her here by force.
Severe Weather Warning
Thursday, 4 March 2004
We were planning to head over to Fraser Island today, but decided not to when we heard the lady at the ticket booth telling a whole gaggle of backpackers that the island was off limits due to impending bad weather, and that all campers and visitors were being kicked off… sorry ….evacuated. So we went elsewhere, swimming in between rain showers, dodging swooping kookaburras and grimacing over mediocre coffee. Went past the supermarket on the way home and everybody is buying up like it’s the day before a long weekend – not to mention the line up and the petrol station. Hervey Bay is taking this weather stuff pretty seriously! Here’s what the Bureau reckon:
A DANGEROUS SITUATION IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP ON FRIDAY AS A LOW MOVES TOWARDS THE SOUTH QUEENSLAND COASTLINE AND DEEPENS.
Destructive wind gusts to 130 km/h are expected to develop early on Friday between about Town of 1770 and the Sunshine Coast gradually extending southwards to the Gold Coast during the day. The combination of large ocean swells and the high tide Friday morning will produce water levels above the highest tide of the year between Fraser Island and the Sunshine Coast leading to some flooding of low lying areas close to the shoreline. People should also keep out of the water whilst these large ocean swell persist. Heavy rains are likely with some local flooding. People between Town of 1770 and Coolangatta should secure outside items, take any necessary precautions and listen to the next warning which will be issued at 8pm tonight.
The Age says similar things. Of course this means that the kite surfers are already having abundant fun, using all the wind to their advantage. Haven’t seen any actual surfers yet, but have begun eyeing my surfboard….
Water Water Everywhere
Friday, 5 March 2004
The backyard is slipping slowly under water. Our regular little creek has formed a confluence with another creek that appeared in the night. It’s quite interesting. It also completely validates my plans to sell this house in the dry season… I’m sure some prospective buyers might have a tiny problem with our picturesque creeky things. Will post a picture later. The wind is picking up and we have to take HouseGuests No.6 to the bus station – hopefully they will be able to vacate Hervey ‘almost cyclonic’ Bay for Brisbane without any freak gusts of wind carrying them off. And Toto too.
Wind & Water
Friday, 5 March 2004
This is starting to annoy me. Just before I left for Melbourne in January I planted some sunflower seeds. In the last few days they have grown taller than me and they are now even taller than M! So they’re at least six and a half foot high – they’re amazing. But we are currently getting winds up to 100kmp/h and they have almost been annihilated. M and I were out at the vegie patch in our gortex jackets hammering stakes to try and save them from being blown over. My corn isn’t looking so great either, but at least it’s not top heavy like my sunflowers. I was already pissed off that I was going to miss them when they flowered as I have to head south v.soon, but to have them ripped out by the wind… GRRRROWL. The smeariness of this picture is due to the torrents of rain that you can’t see very clearly.
…and here’s a close up of my sunflowers (
Oh. M has just come in armed with his Super8 camera to announce that our little bridge that my dad and Terry fixed up over our creek has just been submerged. Great. More updates soon. OK. I’ve become a meteorlogical geek. The cats are inside, thanks for asking…
Ratty
Wednesday, 10 March 2004
As so often happens when I depart for the grey climes of the south, M gets a huge burst of energy. I think it’s from being solitary after a solid month of three different lots of visitors. Anyway. He made his own humane rat trap. We think they are bush rats and they have been dancing Irish reels in our roof for months. We compromised on the bait (or so I’m led to believe – I’m so far away he could have put anything in there and I would never know) – I suggested peanut butter and he suggested cheese. It worked. He put the cage thing in the roof and caught a mofo rat a few hours later.
So then the second stage of his evil plan went into action. M and the rat (still in it’s cage) jumped in the Humber and went for a long drive. They stopped near a large lot of land that had quite a few kangaroos hanging about and M set rat free. He thought that would be his last sight of rat – running gleefully out of the wonder-cage, but no, he waited a few minutes and glimpsed rat again, bounding over a log. He doesn’t think rat was running in the direction of our house.
Glug. Sniff
Monday, 15 March 2004
My bloody boss came into work last week with a hideous cold. Obviously it took advantage of the fact that our office has no ventilation (J stuffed a pillow in the vent just like I did last year, because it gets so cold in here that we all had to use hot water bottles and scarves – in the middle of summer) and somehow it weaved its evil way into me. And percolated quietly all weekend. And then decided to emerge today with sore throat, endless sneezing and an increasingly smuffy nose. I don’t have time for a cold.
The thing is, I was declaiming last night to my mum and my nan how I haven’t eaten fruit for ages – nice fruit seems to be in short supply in Hervey Bay. My nan went into shock: “You have to eat fruit.” I shrugged. Ate an apple to placate them. And then another, because it was nice. All to no avail. So now I have to choose my anti-cold drugs. I generally don’t take them, but, like the ad says – I have to ‘soldier on’. (Not being eligible for sick pay has something to do with this.) Your anti-cold drug of choice? Anyone?
Country Air
Sunday, 21 March 2004
After a large roast dinner at the House of Crime on Friday night I headed to Chris’s house to stay in her spare room. Having eaten a meal two times the size of my own head, I crumpled on to the bed and passed out. To be woken around 2am by drunken giggling from downstairs. They were home. After taking about ten minutes to get themselves through the back door I heard N bellow “B is upstairs in bed, Lets go and see B!!” I lay quaking as Chris and N cantered up the stairs, burst into my room, N straddling my supine, face down figure (clad in only PJ bottoms) and played some rapid percussion with her hands on my bare back, while screaming “She’s so warm. Chris! Feel how warm she is! Warmer than a Hot Cross Bun!!”
Goodbye & Good Luck
Tuesday, 23 March 2004
Said goodbye over spaghetti marinara and risotto to the fascinating Claire last night ( she is disappearing on an odessey of mythical proportions on the 2nd of April. Included in her travels is *gasp* a ticket to see the Pixies play. I almost swallowed the table when she told me. I am consumed by envy. I donated her my ten US dollars that I have been carrying around in my purse for forever, and I got a laminated Hawaiian poster with my name on it in Hawaiian in return. Claire disappears to the US, Canada, and then London…with no particular date of return *waves* Byeeeeeee!
This morning I had the choice between a train that looked like a bale of hay promoting help for erection problems – the connection? A ‘roll in the hay’. *wince* As a discerning public transport traveller I chose to wait for the IPod tram – if I can’t afford to have one, at least I can travel in a tram that screams it’s name. Soon I will write about the trials of Spain.
Sleep Deprived
Friday, 26 March 2004
After having one of those ‘thank god I’m back in my own bed’ sleeps on Wednesday night, last night I slept for a total of about three sporadic hours. I’m sure it was mostly to do with pasta salad overload combined with some red wine, but there was another factor. For about three months now M has sworn he has another bat friend that makes regular visits. Unfortunately the only other person to see this phenomenon is Rachael P who has not confirmed or denied. I have my doubts. Apparently Bat is quite small and visits (via the bathroom window) whatever room M happens to be in and does two sedate laps with all his little sonars snapping. And then disappears. So last night I’m lying there half asleep and I hear batwing noise. (I’m not sure how I knew it was batwing noise as the closest I usually get to batwings is via my gothy friend, but… I digress…). I heard it go by twice, naturally. M flicked on the torch but we couldn’t spot it.
After that, I couldn’t sleep. And one of the worst things when you can’t sleep is being ultra-conscious of the other person in the bed every time you want to turn over. So here I am. Typing baggy eyed and smeary. Blisters on my hands from raking grass yesterday.
One Day a Year
Monday, 29 March 2004
I just fought off a cockroach so large that it could have qualified as a dachshund. It was in the sink. Ewww. I survived M’s birthday today; more importantly M survived and seemed to have a good time. It feels like no time and an eon since this day last year when we all gathered in the cafe at the end of the pier in St Kilda – which promptly burnt down three months later. M coped manfully with my mother and my nan today – even when my mother out-talked him at lunch and turned him into a shadow of his loquacious self. Thank you to those who sent and called up with birthday greetings – it made us feel less like we’re living in the arse end of nowhere… M is now filled with mud cake, coffee and is watching ’24′ in a state of semi smug sedation. I think his new minidisc player/recorder is a happy addition to his existence…
Banana Bird
Tuesday, 30 March 2004
There is a huge banana tree outside our kitchen window. I had never entertained the thought that it would actually banana for us, but about three weeks ago the covering of some pods fell off and there were about thirty little green bananas hanging there. I felt momentarily like I was marooned on a tropical island and had to make a cup of tea. In addition to the green bananas we have inherited a banana bird. We have never seen him before. He’s of medium size, brown and white, with a blue band around each of his eyes. He sits just above the bananas and sings his guts out at least twice a day, and then, his job done, disappears.
Off We Go
Wednesday, 31 March 2004
We’re off in a few minutes to Fraser Island. It’s a beautiful day – so hopefully it won’t matter that we are without transport. We should just be able to swim on the beach and in the pools. M and I are fast running out of funds… and as the case every second Wednesday I wait feverishly until after 2pm when my pay finally comes through (to be eaten mostly by rent and bills…but hey, at least there’s a bit left over for beer). M is strumming the guitar, despairing of us leaving on time. My nan is waiting patiently. My mother is sniffing at things and slathering herself with suncream. I’m sorted – can’t you tell? ;o)
See You in Marblehead
Saturday, 3 April 2004
Last night my nan took us out to dinner on the final night of their visit. My mother sulked; she wanted to eat at home, but was voted vehemently down. We went to a thai place where the food was sublime. This morning we took them to the station, stopping at a few places in Maryborough to try and get sandwiches for them to take on the train, my mother reeling in shock that no one had brown bread. She had to resort to getting a couple of plain rolls from a bakery. Maryborough and Hervey Bay are white-bread heaven. I’m sure most of their populace exists on it. Anyway. Of course I’d left my purse at home on the fridge so had to scrounge petrol money from my mum, who managed not to roll her eyes.
Said goodbye at the station. I don’t know when I’m going to see my nan again. She’s heading back to Marblehead, Massachusetts in mid-April. We had a lovely time with her – she loved how quiet it is here. Read her way through a few books. Got the hang of getting in and out of the front seat of the van. For someone who is 80-ish, she is very on the ball. We hit the beach a couple of times, went to every op-shop in Maryborough, went to the movies, visited M’s mother, took a tour of Brooklyn House. Most places we went to eat she and I would share a shandy. The three of us walked into the public bar of the Red Roo in Maryborough and drank beer to recover from the heat of the day. My nan has that admirable habit of seeming to be comfortable pretty much anywhere; she left Mudgee, and Australia, in about 1945 as a war bride, married to an American soldier that she’d met in a restaurant in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne. So she’s learnt to be adaptable! It was not nice saying goodbye at the station. Nan is not good at goodbyes, and I am worse. I usually get depressed leaving people in Melbourne, but leaving my little five foot nothing Nan was far worse. M and I promised that we head over to the US to visit this time next year when we have sold the house and have some funds for the first time ever. I feel like a wrung out face washer.
Snail Pace at Knots
Tuesday, 6 April 2004
Days are slipping past very quickly – it is now less than two weeks until I head for Spain. M and I inspected the Humber door this morning – it is bad, but possibly fixable. It seems to be more of an issue with the actual door hinges, so I think I will start by hunting a set of them down. I may have to get the dent in the front panel beaten straight – obviously this all has to wait on money. Bloody Spain is going to dent my non-existent finances, though my parents have donated me a bit of dosh to survive on.
The other thing that is contributing to my nail chewing is the fact (don’t laugh, Honeybone) that I have to figure out today what to get from the guy who sold me the stolen laptop. He offered me another laptop, but as I don’t really need one now he said I could pick some other things. At present I’m ruminating on a new Palm Pilot (Tungsten T3) although the battery life appears to be fairly crap – I would love a Palm that had all the specs of the T3 but had the option of AAA batteries, or at least a removeable one. I’m also trying to figure out if it works with my Pocketmail BackFlip, Palm Modem, and PalmKeyboard. Anyway, am also dwelling on an external DVD burner. i am hopeless at this stuff; usually when I’m buying gadget-y stuff I spend forever researching the best thing to get – but I have to get it sorted today. Argh.
The Wrong & the Right Side of Bed
Wednesday, 7 April 2004
Sometimes you get up in the morning and although nothing has changed (except the getting of sleep) you feel better. Despite being dragged from bed by M’s mother calling to ask me ‘how do you find an email address?’ I am feeling improved. Thoughts of a new palm Pilot in the post are doubtless cheering my demeanor – I am also reading one of the few Saint books that I’ve never read before – The Saint in New York which is entertaining me hugely. Even the prospect of M’s mother coming to dinner tonight (and the associated house cleaning required beforehand) has not squashed me back into the malfunctioning mess of the past few days. Now hopefully M will be able resist continuing to ask me ridiculous questions like his latest one: “Did Elton John write any of his own songs?” I think he is going squiffy from too much window puttying.
Pink Lady Wombat
Monday, 12 April 2004
OK, the entry below this one is just me playing around with posting to this page via email. I’ve been trying to figure out the most idiot proof way I can, and this has only taken me a short time to get working. Typical. I leave for Spain in six days, I have not opened the two travel books I have on the topic, instead I have been figuring out how I’m going to be connected to the rest of the world via a combination of my pocketmail backflip, my palm pilot, an ekno card, foldout keyboard and my brain.
Of course, with all my Palm related research of early last week I have discovered that all my palm pilot peripherals will, of course, not work with my new T3 that should be arriving tomorrow. So I will have to continue to schlep around my old palm to do my pocketmailing, which is kind of dumb. I will keep the T3 for a few months and then consider whether I’d rather sell it and nab an LCD monitor for our recording rig (which, acb, will be up and running by the end of the week).
Last night we headed to M’s mothers (I think she was still reeling from the salad meal) for a baked dinner with M’s family. I ate too much, mostly because when I encounter roast potatoes and gravy I tend to try and consume enough to last me until the next time, which could be months away. So this morning I got up at 6am (as I’m going to have to do every day this week, because the train I need to get to Brisbane on Sunday is full, and they have instructed me to ring at 6am every morning on the off chance that someone has cancelled their ticket overnight *sigh*) and walked all the way around the block. This isn’t as lame as it sounds – as anyone who has visited will know. M reckons it at about a kilometre and a half. Some of which was uphill. So now I am feeling very smug. And I still have half a chocolate wombat (made by the people who created the equally excellent chocolate bilby sitting on my newly clean and tidy desk. Now I just have to mow the lawn, plant some seedlings and make a To Do list and I will have my full quota of smug for the day.
Goodbye Easter
Tuesday, 13 April 2004
Had an unintentionally excellent Easter break with lots of swimming, walking, beer, wine and gin&tonics. The weather at the moment is to die for, the humidity is back to normal and it’s been about 27/28 degrees every day. I am typing now through a haze of four dark chocolate TimTams and may not come across as hugely coherent, but am feeling strangely affirmed: when I google for miaow guess who is top of the list? Me! Yes, I know…small minds – etc. etc.
Another cause for excitement is the fact that my friend Marg has had her first novel (which I – ahem – had the great pleasure of proofreading) accepted for publication by Penguin!
It’s fantastic news and she is thoroughly deserving of the most chunky advance they can offer. I should snap up her domain name now before she becomes famous enough to be cyber-squatted and has to buy it back for a bomb.
Here is a better picture of the Banana Bird that M took this morning out the kitchen window.
ThirtySomething
Monday, 3 May 2004
Arrived home forty minutes before midnight the night before my birthday, which was my intention. Left London at 2pm on Thursday and flew via Dubai and Singapore to end up in Melbourne 12.30am on Friday night. Slept for the next 11 hours at my sisters place, having been thoughtfully collected by my dad, who deposited me back at the airport at 2.30pm the same day to get a flight to Brisbane. From there I got a five hour train to Maryborough. Am more than glad to be home! M met me at the station, and I prattled at him for the entire 36km home and then an hour or so until I realised he looked more dead than alive. Sleep is good, though still erratic.
Our house is painted! Huzzah! My dad came up to visit M in my absence and despite my belief that they had done little but consume vast amounts of beer and mudcrabs (from the mangroves at the end of the street) they actually painted the whole house twice. A beautiful deep Brunswick Green, the guttering is Indian Red and the windows will be that Regency Cream colour. Not amazingly adventurous, but it looks amazing and very buyer-friendly *sob*
My birthday was low-key, but I was so happy to be home that I wouldn’t have minded if all I’d done was drink stubbies of VB on the couch all day. M gave me a v.cool vintage make-up case with a bottle of gin in it, a new Reg Hill book, and some cool Italian sunglasses. Naturally I’d presented him the previous night with a different bottle of gin and a different book from my travels, but that just made it better. (When I was little my grandma used to give the kids whose birthday it wasn’t a present as well – something that I’m sure my mother thought ridiculous, but we appreciated it – so M got some faux-birthday joy of his own.)
Unfortunately M’s oldest brother is very ill, so that impacted on the day a little, as we had to help out M’s mother by going over and taking all the fruit and veg that she couldn’t bear leaving to rot. She had to leave yesterday evening with no warning to head down to NSW to see him, so today M and I will be helping out at his sister’s business because she’s gone down as well. I suspect I will be resurrecting my long buried skill at the cash register and cappuchino machine. Bizarre.
So, what with my birthday being conducted in a haze of jetlag, gin and homecoming happiness, it feels like I never went anywhere at all! I am going to get all my photos done this week so I don’t get slack and let them moulder, unseen, on my hard drive. Will also have to write an overview of my whirlwind tour of London, courtesy of my brother, after I have cleaned all the house sanding dust from my desk. Thanks to those people who called and/or sms-ed me. The rest of you can kiss my thirty-one year old butt.
Dumpsville: Pop. Me
Wednesday, 5 May 2004
I have post-travel post-birthday slump. It’s a lovely warm day, I’ve been listening to the Pixies first reformation gig – a fantastic recording from the Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis on the 13th of last month – but I still have a black labrador draped over my much maligned, but genetically unavoidable, non-existent shoulders. To that end I have cleaned the shower of two weeks of mudcrab grime, washed the dishes, wiped down the benches and have searched the internet for Queensland deck-building regulations. Snuffle, says the dog. So I put on some mascara – a surefire way not to let the labrador have total domination. Although I have been wanting to use the line:
[Boy looking at girl with mascara streaked face]
Boy – What’s the matter with you?
Girl – Nothing, my mother was a panda.
The post came. A lovely birthday card from my mate in Iowa containing a CD with (among other equally spectacular things) the exact same Pixies gig that I spent last night labouring over typing the track listing…if I’d just waited twelve hours… Of course, just to balance out my glee, the other letter was from the insurance company telling me that I have to give them $700 in less than two weeks. With amazing alacrity I was able to quickly locate last years amount, which was exactly half of what they are now asking. So I called them. Apparently when I was given my original quote the ‘computers were down’ and so it came in way too cheap, but they honoured it regardless, and I unknowingly saved fifty percent. Too bad that they never told me so I had no idea I would ever have to cough up more than $350 or so. If they hadn’t been so accomodating about getting me a new laptop when mine was fried by lightning (after it was stolen, but before the police took it…make sense?) I would take my my business elsewhere (which I’m sure they would find completely demoralising).
Hmmm. I do remember being told a story about a guy who insured his car by calling a different insurance company every two weeks for a year, and so survived for free on covernotes. [Looks thoughtful]
PuppyBird
Wednesday, 12 May 2004
For the last week I have been singing (to the tune of the They Might Be Giants song Put Your Hand Inside the Puppethead)
The Puppybird – a recent addition to M’s Magpie Gang of Three – is so named because he makes the little mournful noises of a tiny cold puppy. He now, when he feels like it, gets hand fed bits of cheese. Apparently when M went to the back door yesterday the Puppybird was so excited to see him that it began to shiver with spasms of delight.
If anyone can identify the Puppybird….?
Sickening
Saturday, 15 May 2004
I am refusing to succumb to some weirdo cold that, at present, is causing my lips to fall off and my nose to sniffle. This morning M and I witnessed the evils of nature; poor little PuppyBird got pecked on the head by some evil winged foe. He went all dazed and was barely able to peck cheese – and although he seemed to perk up a little, once he flew off we didn’t see him for the rest of the day ( For lunch we headed down to the mangroves with a stubby of Coopers each and ate oysters off the rocks. Mudcrab Count: we had five big females and a couple of undersized males that got a free feed and a walk to freedom.
Tonight is the first seafood free night in about a week – I am going to attempt spaghetti bolognese.
Elastoplast + Dead Man PJs
Sunday, 16 May 2004
Yesterday at the Tip Recycle Shop, M found some apparently excellent wood. In putting it in the van, a large lump of last weekends excellent wood discovery fell on his toe. It doesn’t seem to be broken, but looks like a sad pork sausage. It got cut as well, so he has been diligently taping it with elastoplast to keep it clean and make his shoes bearable. Today we headed, at 8am, to the market to buy cheap vegies to get us through the week. Also on the list were some flannel pjs for M, who has finally started to feel the cold that has been taunting me since my return. Only about five stalls inside the gates were some wondrous flannel pjs.
“I’m six foot two,” said M proudly to the older woman whose stall it was, “d’you think they’ll fit me?”
“How tall was he?” I asked at the same time, slightly less diplomatically.
“Oh, he was six foot two as well,” she said, “they should fit you.”
M held a pair up to himself. They looked like they might fit. The woman seized the moment.
“Tell you what, I’ll give you the three pairs for five dollars.”
M beamed and examined himself while holding up another pair, thus missing the end of her sentence…”I just don’t want to take them home.”
She gave me a look that said either my-husband-of-forty-years-
died-last-month-and-selling-his-clothes-makes-me-want-to-die-too or my-husband-of-forty-years-left-me-last-month-for-the-slapper
-we-met-in-the-caravan-park-at-Woy Woy-and-I-sold-
everything-else-of-his-at-last-weeks-market-but-these
-were-in-the-wash-at-the-time. I looked at her.
I think it was the former. I was brisk.
“Grab them,” I instructed M, “they were on our shopping list.”
So, upon leaving the market with vegies, sailing books, Patrick White’s biography, some discs for the grinder and some passionfruit, we had three pairs of tall blokes flannel pajamas.
A few minutes ago, M, who had completed his toe elastoplasting before retiring, came to say goodnight (I am ensconced in the lounge chair writing a website review due yesterday). As he lent over me, I sweetly requested that he remove the half a dozen or so old elastoplasts that were clugged together in the chest pocket of his new pjs. He looked down at them, looked at his toe and turned a pale puce.
“They’re not mine.”
I started to laugh hysterically, making all the crickets stop.
M started doing a small dance of horror.
“Get them out, take them out, get them out!”
I gurgled.
“They’re dead-man band aids. You’ve got dead-man band aids in your pocket! Euhyewwwww!”
M ran from the room, divesting himself of the now tainted pajama top, reappearing, moments later, in different, but elastoplast free, dead-man flannel.
“I don’t feel happy anymore,” he stated pathetically, “and anyway, I don’t think he died. I think he left her. Definitely.”
And then in a smaller voice;
“Do you think she washed them?”
Wild Wild Life
Thursday, 20 May 2004
Every day there are so many freaky kinds of birds, huge bugs, odd spiders and countless sucidal moths that I am occasionally overwhelmed at the cheap showiness of nature. Particularly since I spent about four hours cleaning the house yesterday – vaccing, mopping, excavating the bathroom and kitchen – only to wake up this morning and find bits of dead moth on the floor and providing delightful table top decoration. Some die in upright position, so it’s hard to tell if they’ve carked it or are just ruminating. It’s never bloody ending. Cockatoos, galahs, ibis, puppybird, weird cricket things bigger than your average sized book, kangaroos, ducks – and all these are either in or wandering around our acre! (Note to self: make a [miaow] wildlife page to shock and awe cyber tourists.)
My boss is on leave, so yesterday I became even more easily tempted away from my computer than usual – and as I could (and still can) hear M working so hard outside on the new front steps I thought I would shock him rigid by displaying some domesticity. I even cooked Chicken Vindaloo for dinner (with a little bit of improvising, now I’ve tested the waters with the muffins). It was supposed to be ‘medium’ hotness and M ate it looking beatific, while I punctuated each mouthful with slugs of water and vastly unattractive nose wiping. Afterwards I felt cleansed. Singed, but cleansed. Am not sure what M felt, as he had to leave the room.
Oh. Anyone looking for a cool search tool could do worse than try GGSearch. I downloaded it this morning and am finding it v.useful. It means I can get rid of the search toolbar in Opera that I always forget to use anyway. I loike it.
Rain
Monday, 24 May 2004
It’s one of those on again/off again days, where it could rain at any minute. Right now it’s decided to come down. Earlier we went fishing and I caught three big bream – and M caught one that was too whippy for me to pull in with the handline – he seems to be coping fairly well with my fish prowess, but I sense he may shortly tire of being my fish caddy. Because we had forgotten to take some books to read, or some of the many Earth Garden back issues I got from the library sale, we were forced entertain ourselves by making up words to describe the feeling of having a fully baited hook untouched by prospective piscine protagonists as mullet leap freely in the air all around us. We have:
Frustmullaise
Frullet
Fishspare
(as in the old English term ‘so many fishes all around but not a bite for me’ – Chas was feeling fishspare as his line languished in the lagoon)
I am sitting here listening to the birds freak out in the rain, drinking tea accompanied by a dark chocolate tim tam (the only kind) while I perve on the house up the road via realestate.com.au. I’ve worked my butt off in the garden and on the house for the past two days – it’s nice to do not much for a little while.
Expired
Wednesday, 26 May 2004
That would be me. Expiring. Headed to the end of the street at lunchtime and emerged and hour and a half later:
Me – a whiting and a bream
Him – a mofo bream
Extra exciting was the turtle I saw swimming along the edge of the rocks. It had barnacles on its back and the whole real live not-in-captivity turtle thing going on. Delovely.
Then I came back home and instead of getting work done I went into slow meltdown mode over our finances, which aren’t exactly robust at the best of times, but as it’s now one year since we bought the house, everything needs renewing (though why the car registration had to appear now is beyond me – it seems somewhat overly harsh on the part of fate). Argh. Money money money money. Crud crud crud crud. As long as I have enough for this, I’ll almost cope. We are v.close to getting some back that the bank witheld from us at the beginning; just have to put powerpoints in the kitchen, rewire a couple of lights and fix the greasetrap *yawn* Am medicating myself with saladas and cheese – the Puppybird is finely attuned to anything cheese related, so I medicated him too. He now eats in the back room where other evil little bastard birds can’t peck him on the head.
Superseded
Saturday, 5 June 2004
I travelled all the way from Hervey Bay to stay in another, almost equally unexciting place starting with the letter ‘H’. Hampton. I can walk to the beach from here too, but I won’t, due to my lack of beach footwear and clothes. Although I’m sure it might entertain the locals to see me striding across the bike track, down the path and on to the sand in my leather boots with heels, I feel I must deny them that pleasure. Having Ellise as my two-houses-away neighbour is a big plus that home doesn’t have – as well as a ‘Curry in a Hurry’ within walking distance.
I am successfully waging my own puny war against the price hike in public transport tickets that I noticed had happened last time I was here. I am one station out of Zone 1, which means that for the sublime experience of staying on the train in the dark for the two minutes that it takes to go from Brighton Beach (Zone 1) to Hampton (Zone 2) I have to pay $3.60: a $9.40 daily ticket instead of a $5.80 ticket. Crud. I have weighed my options and decided that I’m least likely to get caught if I buy a Zone 1/2 two hour ticket ($5) in the morning (in case the scary ticket inspectors have decided to ride the train from Sandringham) and then get a two hour Zone 1 ticket ($3) on the way home. That way I’m cheating this bloody government that I helped vote in (who have not done a great deal of good) out of $1.40 a day. It’s the least I can do. Read Diary of an Average Australian for a story about transport and what can be achieved by a bit of well-aimed agitation/media manipulation. It improved my Friday morning.
/..break for computer fumbling/…
The title of ‘Superseded’ relates to my horrified discovery that my mother has just got a better laptop than me. And not just any better laptop. Her laptop is the next model ThinkPad – the R50 – the precise one that came after mine. It’s demeaning, to say the least. So naturally I have now configured it to connect to my ISP (she only uses it to type up the schooll reports of small, swattable children called Niamh, Blake and Jackson). Of course this post was immediately disturbed half way by the lovely lsass virus that I somehow managed to get within five minutes of logging on. D’oh. Luckily I’ve been through this before and downloaded the little stinger.exe app to kill it off. Phew – and she’s still not home from yoga.
Mingling with the Masses
Tuesday, 8 June 2004
So on Friday night I was in bed by 9pm and stayed in my PJs until midday Saturday. That night I tried to drink Mr Honeybone under the table. Failed. Slept on their floor. Got up, took the tram into Flinders Street and for the first time since high school I got the train to Camberwell Market. Pillaged it for clothes that I will only be able to wear in temperatures of 24 degrees and above. (Feminine practicality and my headache at work.) Got two old books in the hope that they will be highly collectable and I will never have to work again. (General impracticality and my powerball dream in a different guise). Headed back to the city. Marched down Swanston Street in support of World Environment Day and Tasmania’s forests. Hopped on the train and a tram to Jocks and got Butterfish with Chili & Lemon Zest Marinade with Pumpkin & Broccoli Salad for my efforts *yum* (the dinner completely deserved all those capital letters I just gave it). And then got a lift all the way to Hampton. So that was my weekend. Lots of public transportation!
Mess
Sunday, 13 June 2004
So my mum has been gone since Friday morning. This is good. I have the place to myself. But what I don’t understand is how she keeps it sooooo tidy?! I look around me and strewn across the bench are vitamins, a half drunk bottle of water, an unopened bottle of wine, empty juice bottle, brown sugar, chai syrup, her notes to me (…the rubbish goes out on Tuesday night, remember to bring the bin in when you get home on Wednesday, if you have to use my car, make sure you use leaded petrol, water the plants, close the curtains…remember to turn the heating off….), then there’s this weeks and last weeks Green Guide, my work bag, shoes…the list goes on. I must remember. Constant vigilance! De-messify!
Am going out to play some music with Chris and Mung later on, and decided that I must wash my jeans before I wore them again. So now, whenever I glance to my right, it looks very much like someone has dived head first down the heating vent in the floor. I’ve spread the waist of my jeans around the vent and the legs are sticking up, filled with hot air, supported by the back of a chair. Creepy. Oh. And just for pointers? Don’t read a blow by blow description of the Columbine shootings in (that quite astonishingy crappy) GQ magazine that someone gave you because it’s got an interview with Frank Black/Black Francis in it. You will then drift uneasily in and out of sleep, trying to work out three failproof escape routes from your bedroom. Not good for the eye bags that you stayed home last night to try and banish.
I Don’t Like Coughee
Monday, 21 June 2004
I have a curious disease in which I cough spasmodically late at night and early in the morning. In between these times I vacillate between totally vagued out and pretend normalcy. So I just bought some LemSip cough mixture that smells like low grade disinfectant, which I am hoping will provide an instant cure. The past few days have been spent packing up all the stuff in M’s mothers house. I have managed to subdue M to the point where he only refers to his mother as ‘Old Manky’ when not in her immediate presence. This is a good thing. But it has left me pondering Mank.
A curiously expressive word. Indeed, I have been, as I said, pondering its heritage. I can only conclude that it’s a collision of mould and stank, however I remained slightly stymied as stank is obviously a past-tense word, i.e.
“Her refrigerator stank.”
But mank is an obvious improvement on stank as it can be applied in both the present and the past tenses.
“Her refrigerator is mank.”
“Her refrigerator was mank.”
(…and it has even more flexibility, as in both of the previous statements, the letter ‘y’ could have been added to make mank into manky and the meaning would have stayed the same.)
Besides being breathless with awe at all the ways M manages to weave the word mank into daily life, I am intrigued by its very existence. I do recall a friend of mine using it back when I was in about Year 8. I googled mank and ended up with lots of references to mankkind, but on googling manky, I found this. Does anyone else use mank? It’s not listed in WordMap – but then again, it’s probably not a regionalism.
Hostly Hostly
Monday, 28 June 2004
Last night we had people we had never previously met come for dinner and stay over. We are feeling very hostly. The female half of the couple in question is my sisters boyfriend’s sister. We had a lot of fun, despite our lack of preparation (i.e. one teabag, no treats, no beer). They made us crepes on our little camp stove. Lemon and sugar.
Squash It All In
Saturday, 3 July 2004
Our good friends PGR & Al were a welcome addition to our household – but it was for such a Short Time! On the morning after the UFO noise everyone but me headed out (without breakfast) on a fishing expedition, which ended up including a bollocking from the facist at the end of the street, who in turn was bollocked on a royal scale by ShutUpAndStopIt and his mate from next door. Fifteen bream were caught, Al almost got friendly with a shark and filled her gumboots (my gumboots actually) …with water. They all came home beside themselves with excitement, and we had bream cooked over the fire for breakfast – except for Al who is anti-fish – she just likes to catch them.
We headed out at about noon in a little boat borrowed from M’s brother-in-law. It was all v.exciting – we stopped on an island and I played photographer while everyone went for a swim.
Then we took off again with our little 20hp Chrysler and after cruising around for a while, we dropped anchor and began fishing. It was fish city out there! Al and I caught lots of undersize ones, M did not too badly, but PGR was crowned Fish Man for catching a mofo snapper. We came to the conclusion that we should have taken a ‘What Fish Is That?’ book with us, as we ended up returning a lot to the sea because we didn’t know what the hell they were.
We hauled the boat out and headed home in time for M and the guests to go and check the crab pots. No joy. But mudcrabs on top of all the fish we had for dinner might have just pushed the excitement level that bit too far. I wrapped up all the fish in foil with garlic, rosemary, butter, onion and lemon and also some potato and sweet potato. We chucked them all on the fire and had a few drinks until deciding they were ready. After dinner (I can’t believe how much we squashed into this day) we decided more wine was in order, and that the absence of any marshmallows could no longer be borne. It was v.luxurious to be driven into town by PGR in the hire car – we haven’t been able to venture out after dark for months, as the van headlights are notoriously unreliable.
Back around the fire we polished off the marshmallows and the wine; then M and I made the house guests watch the South Park episode we love, ‘Cat Orgy‘ and then forced them to watch our Super 8 film of the great flood of the garden that happened back in February. Then we finally let them go to bed. A grand day out!
Getting There
Sunday, 11 July 2004
OK – how’s it looking? I cannot spend much more time on this page – it’s killing me. Other parts of my life are getting abandoned. It has taken over the past four nights trying to wheedle my way around CSS – in the end I just gave up and went back to using a combination of CSS and tables – which is why I’m wondering what it looks like in Mozilla and Safari. In Opera, the page looks extremely odd while loading, but then it ends up looking fine. If you can be bothered letting me know, I would be grateful!
Today I was M’s ‘bucket bitch’. The title is of my own invention – it applies to anyone who is the person that collects the yabbies and throws them in the bucket while the other person, the ‘pumper’ (…this is sounding more and more pornographic – my apologies, it’s late…) goes wild with the yabby pump. That said, we did swap roles (sorry) and I had my first ever go at yabbying – and this is years after I wrote the words to a song called Yabby Pie! Some of the yabbies got used for bait later in the day, but I let most of them go – chicken guts are better for bait anyway – they’re already dead, which means I don’t have to come over all girly and get M to bait my line.
The Lost Weekend
Monday, 26 July 2004
Friday night: I was very disappointed not to make it to Anthony’s shin-dig with Deb Conway in his (and Raes!) loungeroom. It was J’s last day at work and everybody had to go for dinner – for some weird reason, everybody went along – no one had any other committments, and I felt too bad to leave after an hour. Bugger. Bugger. Saturday found M and I prancing down Brunswick Street. It’s very nice to have him along with me – h’e much less intimidated by fancy clothes shops than I am, so we swanned in and out of many! I hit Kleins Perfumery [swoon] and we had a glass of red each and pesto bread at The Fitz.
That night was the party held in honor of the Doctor Of Grass’s Phd. The bits of it I can remember were fun 
and I have lots of photos that I took throughout the night of people dancing in the kitchen and eating the sublime fingerfood. Spent Sunday feeling extremely poorly – I returned to the house of Doctor Grass and was fed hot water, panadols, soda water and fizzy ginger drinks – to the point that by about 5pm I felt not too bad at all. But then we got the taxi from hell. I think by the time we got to Collingwood I was closer to a technicolour yawn than I’ve been for quite sometime. The taxi driver was a maniac, cut kerbs, took speedbumps like they weren’t there and the worst bit? The taxi reeked of a combination of sweat, cigarettes and body odour. M also felt very queasoid. I had to pass out again for two hours to recover, and nibbled at the best dinner I’ve had here so far – take away indian, plus Mungs marvellous banana/coconut salad and another salad of tomato and italian parsley. Now I’m almost back to feeling human – if you can disregard the coldsore that is threatening to take out my whole face.
BeNumbed
Tuesday, 27 July 2004
OK – I don’t think it’s weird to get numb needles to have my teeth cleaned. If I didn’t, the whole country would shut down as my screams rent the air asunder. But back at my mind-bogglingly exciting place of work, everyone thinks I am a freakazoid. I had eight needles – I needed them, because she still had to stop every now and then to check that I was still alive and hadn’t astral travelled on a one way excursion to a better place. Personally I think I am sensible. Needles don’t freak me out nearly as much as the possibility of feeling someone poke a long pointy bit of metal on to what may very well be my raw toothsome nerve ending. So there. I feel like I have a mouth that looks like Homer.
Now I’m just trying to think of how many points to demerit M for going into the dentist before me and then heading off to see a movie as I was lead to the Chair. He knows I am a dentaphobe, and yet he cares not. Actually – I’ve been getting so stressed out about fitting people into our visit (namely, my parents – if only they hadn’t divorced, it would have been just one easy visit – gah) that I don’t think I’ve been the best or funnest partner in crime. I say – minus 17 points. That will do nicely.
Cooking With Gas
Tuesday, 10 August 2004
Things are looking marginally better. For a start, we have a working gas cooktop! Tonight, for the first time in over a year, we won’t be cooking on our trusty one-burner camp stove. Shock and Awe! I have a face like a sunbaked lizard, but am trying to ignore it. I still can’t bring myself to feed those evil bastards that used to be my furry beloved cats. This is what keeping your cats in their own detention centre will do to you. It will convince you that they couldn’t possibly commit random acts of cruelty. Wrong.
I am on the trail for a voltage regulator for my car. In other breaking news, my boss’s wife’s sister is apparently interested in looking at our house, so I have put an array of what I hope are flattering photos online, and concocted a very dodgy floorplan map. I’m sure it will come to nothing, but as I just found out that I’ve missed the advertising deadlines for Earthgarden magazine, I have to follow every lead, however flimsy. So if there is anyone out there who thinks a lovely old Queenslander under $300k might excite them or someone they know…
I think I feel a bit better today, due to spending 20 minutes at about 2am this morning giggling hysterically. I got woken up by M having, what I call, a dog dream. He pedals his legs and shifts from side to side, like he’s trying to escape something. In this situation I always think it’s better for me to wake him indirectly i.e. by drinking from my bottle of water, or rearranging my pillow – rather than risk losing an arm by shaking him awake. So I drank some water, and he floated back to consiousness.
The first thing he mumbled was;
“It was trying to bite me, it tried to bite me.”
I was solicitous. “What tried to bite you?”
“We were away with some people, and you disappeared, and when you came back no one noticed you were any different. But I knew, I could tell. You were a zombie. A flesh eating zombie.”
I ponder this, wondering about the Freudian possibilities.
He goes on;
“I threw my Chokito bar at you and it hit you on the head. It just bounced off. Everyone thought I was being mean to you, but I was trying to stop you biting me. And then your dad was there and you bit him on the back of the head, and he turned into a zombie too. I tried to run….”
“Yes, I noticed that.”
“…but you grabbed me and tried to bite me…”
Actually, I have to admit that this dream loses a lot in the retelling. At 2am in the morning it made me cry laughing. Maybe I will get M to tell me again, so I can capture its essence a bit better.
Bargain Bonanza
Saturday, 14 August 2004
I thought yesterday was good when I got a patchwork cushion for $1, some picnic cups in an old leather case ($2) and some old books. Today was much, much better. I have to brag somewhere, and as I’ve got no mates up here, I may as well indulge in some cyber-bragging. M bought me a present – a brand new fishing rod and reel. It’s amazing. A seven foot Jarvis Walker Fishunter- Series II. Totally sexy. We also learnt today that with the modern, chemically sharpend hooks, barbless ones are just as effective as the evil barbed ones – and it’s important to use hooks that rust, so if a fish gulps one and gets away, its stomach acids dissolve the hook. Stainless steel ones just stay there and fester. OK. Those are my fishing tips for the month. Back to…the
So, in the same hour that I received my special rod, I found myself the perfect present to accompany it. A boat!! I bought a boat! Guess how much it was? Twenty whole dollars. From the Tip Shop. It is a bit run down, but M is very optimistic that we’ll have it cleaned up and looking sharp with a couple of days work on it. He is going to make me a mast, centreboard and rudder – and I will have to get some oars. I am going to name her Oomoo. Wah-hoo! I will post some pictures of the tarting-up process. At the tip shop we also got two old wheels, which we may use to make Oomoo easier to manouvre, and I got a very quirky, sixties looking book called ‘A Christmas Story’ by Richard Burton. Yeah. That’s right. Liz’s ex. M went squiffy over eight lengths of hardwood that will be perfect for supporting the house eyebrows that he’s been diligently working on – he got them all for eight dollars and took great delight in working out what the same kind of wood would have cost from Bunnings – $140 – yike. We also got an ugly standard lamp type thing, that has now – as I type – morphed into a very kooky birdfeeder via some paint, wood and ingenuity.
Earlier, at a car boot sale, I scored a very nice stainless steel thermos ($5) and a cute little red suitcase ($2) which will live in the boot of the Humber and be stocked with impromptu picnic necessities. M filled a bag with clothes (three shirts, one jumper, one t-shirt) for two dollars, snaffled a brand new eight-cup Bodum coffee plunger ($5) and an extractor fan ($1). By the time we got home at about 3pm, our van was weighed down with our accumulations – we celebrated with a long neck of Cooeprs Sparkling. It was like a mini-Christmas.
My Boat
Sunday, 15 August 2004
Today we went and got my boat. After stating grandly that we were to work on her for one hour per day, M then spent the next five hours dismantling bits, cutting out rot and sanding Oomoo to within an inch of her life. For his endeavours, M is awarded 39 points and has established that we have a very well built little boat. Humberiffic, in fact. All aboard!
Flying
Monday, 16 August 2004
After some long distance counselling and overt suggestions my debt ridden Small Brother is going to make his way home from London. He called to ask whether we would still be in Queensland in October. I said, hoping hard, probably not. M then laughed hysterically, so I had to call back and say we would definitely still be in Queensland, probably until I’ve become a dim-sim shaped One Nation voter; at least 2007. Thus it has come to pass that Small Brother will be winging his way to Hervey Bay (well, Brisbane) mid-October. Huzzah! We will make him, if he stays longer than two weeks, pay his rent in beer – and drink it all ourselves whilst he lies, unconsious with boredom, on the floor. Am not sure what he thinks there is to do here, however I will endeavour to turn him into a gardener and cat tamer. The one thing I’m dreading is having he and M together – they will bond again over puerile humour, lesbian innuendo and cheap red. Oh, the humanity.
Under Water
Tuesday, 17 August 2004
M and I have just hit a new low. There is no good TV tonight and we were transfixed by a packet of dark TimTams while sitting on the couch after dinner. I’m not sure whether these caused the madness that then ensued, or whether it would have occurred regardless, but what transpired was that M declared a competition in which we had to hold each others noses closed to see who could last the longest. Obviously he did it because I utterly rely on breathing through my nose at all times, and don’t like snorkling very much for this reason (and that when I first went snorkling with M I got hypothermia, but that’s beside the point). He made us count the seconds, but our voices became more and more muffled and ridiculous and I began to get the giggles, which resulted in me crying with laughter with M still grimly hanging on to my nose. Then his nose seemed to get squishier and kind of gross. And then all I could think of was my Small Brother arriving unexpectedly from his cosmopolitan life in London to find us, splayed on the couch, squeezing each others nose-holes closed and trying to damply count our way past seventy seconds. Holy crap – there is REALLY nothing going on in Hervey Bay. We are its star weirdo attraction – yet cloaked in a curious mystique, as nobody knows about us – the noseholding, couch cackling phenomenon. If only we could teach the cats to sell tickets…
Frogmouth!
Wednesday, 18 August 2004
I was outside getting some lemons for M’s current favourite dinner of choice. I had the torch (because it’s getting dark here at about 5.30pm) and was perusing the tree (note to self: tell the story of the freak lemons). From another tree nearby I could hear some kind of slapping sounds, and I shone the torch over and lit up a very interesting scene! A Tawny Frogmouth was beating a frog to death on the branch of the tree. Well, that might sound a bit dramatic. By the time I realised what I was looking at, I’m pretty sure the frog had well and truly carked it. They are an impressive looking bird – it didn’t care that I was unintentionally standing very close to it, and it still didn’t care when I brought M out and showed him. Obviously it was concentrating on the prospect of dinner. I didn’t see it’s partner – they mate for life. Very sweet.
Testosterone
Wednesday, 25 August 2004
Earlier today I sat here at my desk listening to the sound of two shovels eating gravel, and then the two whumping noises of that gravel hitting the ground, where, one day, temple-like, our car port will be.
M and my Dad are doing blokey work stuff. I am deskbound today and tomorrow, and am finding myself observing that strange male process of the bartering of ideas. By which I mean, watching two guys who both think – oops, sorry – know they are right, try to get their opinion accepted by the other.
I must admit that I am taking a bit of wicked pleasure in seeing someone else have a differing opinion to M – usually that’s my role. Being in a live-in situation with someone where both of you are home all the time can sometimes dilute the ability to have a nice clean discussion that includes your differing opinions. Sometimes things get thrown, or M goes gargoyle-frowny, or I get rash, or we have The Silence. Sometimes all four, in different order, just for fun. This time however, I don’t even feature. I don’t even have a walk on part. I’m out of the equation! I’m sitting about five rows from the front, throwing back the popcorn, watching my Dad try to tell M that instant concrete is far better for the job they want to do, and watching M try to gracefully beg to differ (as he grasps the dawning realisation that he’s now having to deal with someone that he can’t baffle with blokey knowledgeable DIY anecdotes and the occasional pythagorean theory).
When M and I work together on big projects, I usually take on the role of those little cleaning fish that travel with large tortoises. I do the prep work, I fill the gaps, I fix up the stuff at the end after M has done some high grade transformational carpentry – or, I paint window frames. Many, many, many window frames. But now he is having to rub along with someone who knows all about that stuff, and can say so without even a flicker of a tangential thought of whether the relationship will survive the next trip to Bunnings. I’m loving it. More popcorn please.
Whale Watching
Tuesday, 31 August 2004
The moon is full, it’s almost bright enough to be daylight. I am a Whale. Went to bed just before 10pm tonight – M and my Dad both retired at about 8:30pm – tired out, I expect, from a combination of sand, sun, long walks, beer, dinner, campfire drowsiness and beer. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so wiped out. Until the wind started blowing outside and woke me up – then my overeating kicked in. My father is an advocate of the ‘clean your plate’ – and tonight, yet again, I forgot I turned 31 in May, and when he said ‘finish your dinner’ I shoved it all down. I am truly tempted to go and wake him up so he can suffer with me. Ugh. This is due to the late lunch (4pm) we had on returning home (bread, olives, dukkah), followed by early campfire cooked dinner of mackerel steaks and jacket potatoes. So now I sit in a darkened house, listening to the tap of my keyboard, the wind, and small unknown creatures killing each other companionably under the cover of the night.
Spring has Sprung. Wetly.
Wednesday, 1 September 2004
The new season really made a stylish entry to my area. From about 7pm last night it began raining – for the first time since APRIL – and didn’t stop until this afternoon at 2pm. It was truly a balm to the soul. Everything is beyond dry. I mowed out the front along the street two days ago, and you couldn’t see me for dust. Even though this rain means that the grass is now going to go psycho and I will have to mow like a demon, I don’t care. Maybe [looks hopeful] the vegie garden will revive? In other news, I am supposed to be going to a conference in Perth in October. I had originally said I’d be leaving from Melbourne, as I was convinced we would have sold up and moved by then…yeah right. So now it’s looking like I’ll have to fly to Melbourne and then to Brisbane. I have been able to organise a direct flight from Brisbane to Perth but my boss says he has to ‘think about what’s best’. I could tell him ‘what’s best’ is that I fly there directly, goddamnit, and the more time he spends debating with himself, the more the airfares are going to eat up my exhausted piece of plastic.
Nauty Thoughts
Thursday, 2 September 2004
I have decided not to blog about my boat on [miaow] – aside from all the other boring things I go on about, inflicting boat chatter would probably send some of you screaming, so I have made a new website: My Small Boat. Obsessive? Probably. Care factor? Zero.
Oh. M has a very sore eye. Something went in it yesterday when he briefly forgot the correct way to use his grinder; whatever it was, it was very dextrous – it went under his safety glasses. I had to trail around behind him this morning at B***ings like his own labradoriffic seeing eye dog. Well, I think that’s what he hoped I looked like. The reality is that most people probably assumed I’d taken him out into the carpark and thumped him one. You, Me, Carpark…Now.
Small Eye for the Straight Guy
Tuesday, 7 September 2004
M’s eye is still manky. Before he went to the doctor, he examined it in the bathroom mirror, and emerged, pale and slightly wild. He stood in front of me, attempting to look casual, but the effect was more of an eyerolling horse about to kick down the stable walls and bolt.
“Look at my eyes.”
I looked. He stared back and shifted position.
“Do you see it? Do you see?”
“You mean your manky eye?”
“YES! Do you see what it’s done?”
“Erm…well…it’s small. It’s gone small compared to your other eye. Is that what you mean?”
M sighed heavily.
“Yes, that’s – what – I – mean. Not only do I have a manky eye, I’ve got a small manky eye.”
I sucked in my cheeks and asked him to cover up his good eye.
“Do I look smaller? Am I a Size 8 in your small eye vision?”
M snorted, and narrowed his eyes – rendering the small one almost completely invisible.
“Hurry up. We’re going to the doctors.”
On the way to the doctors I was barely able to contain myself. I sang the theme from Baghdad Cafe – “Eyeeeeeeeee eye eye eye, am caaaaaalling you- can you hear see me? Eyeeeeeeeee eye eye eye, am caaaaaalling you…”. I pointed out huge stupid Queensland 4WD cars, and wondered aloud if they looked like Mini’s in Small Eye Vision – which lead me to wonder what would happen if an actual Mini crossed our path – would Small Eye Vision even register it’s existence? Luckily I was driving.
The doctor excavated M’s eye and prescribed some antibiotic ointment. M exited the surgery looking violated.
“What did he say about the smallness? Did you ask him about it?”
“No,” M said shortly, “he was too busy poking it. He hurt me. Let’s go.”
We went and claimed back our $27.50 on Medicare, marvelling that it was still possible, and headed for the paint shop. The guy there is probably one of the most ‘normal’ people we have met around here. M showed him the mank. The guy – I will call him PaintBoy – laughed cruelly, and then laughed even harder when I pointed out the smallness. They discussed pus for a few minutes, as boys are wont to do, which segued neatly with M’s request for some more paint.
“What colour?” asked Paintboy.
It was like M’s small eye was speaking on his behalf.
“Cream colour.”
Paintboy guffawed. “That pus coloured cream? The paint the colour of your small-eye mank?” (See how well he knows us?)
M nodded sadly. “Yep.”
Paintboy made up M’s cream paint, and then some charcoal paint for me. I noticed that he wrote ‘Beth’s Shade of Charcoal’ on the lid, and as we went to pay for them both, I saw that he’d written on M’s paint tin:
‘M’s Small-Eye Cream’.
Busy Busy & Relativity
Monday, 13 September 2004
Spent yesterday painting every stump around the outside of the house Beth’s Shade of Charcoal – got completely bitten by mozzies and only just escaped a large spider. Exhausting. Then I painted the stump-toppers green (I will upload a photo, so this at least makes some attempt at sense) and then the gateposts. StOC hung out with me – I swear he is part dog. I did washing and visited M’s mother, whom we haven’t seen for over a month. There is a standoff going on, which I am all too aware of – which is largely to do with M’s inability to keep in close contact with his family – or to keep as close as they would like [sigh]. Anyway – I visited.
She is old and wily. I play young and ditzy.
“Hi!” I bubble, bouncing through her back door.
She is sequestered in her chair, opposite a flat panel television larger than our fridge.
“Oh Beth, hello darling…”
I wait for the thrust.
“…I thought you’d gone back to Melbourne.”
I look dumbfounded.
“Really? Noooo. We haven’t seen you for ages, so I just thought I’d visit and break the drought.”
She looks as if she’s about to have another go, so I jump in, dangling an irresistible carrot.
“So – how’ve you been? Has your back been playing up?”
I get twenty minutes of crumbling vertebrae, dry skin, ankles so swollen that the doctor was afraid the skin would split open – interrupted only once by the bloke from next door, who drops around to say he’ll be in tomorrow to take the rest of the turf. The turf that was supposed to be for our house, that, because of the stand-off, we haven’t been around to claim. Now it’s gone.
“I told M that he could have it, but you never let me know, and I haven’t seen you for months, so…”
“Yes. Sorry about that. My Dad came up to visit…”
“So I heard.”
“…and we’ve been working really hard on the house.”
I’m aware of my lameness, but can’t seem to do anything about it.
“I don’t even ring you anymore you know. When I do ring I just get that machine, and I won’t speak to it. I won’t. I just hang up.” She is imperturbable.
“Well that’s just annoying,” I say, daringly. “I was underneath the house today, painting stumps, and the phone rang twice in the room that was above me and there was nothing I could do. Whoever it was just hung up. It’s a pain.”
She changes tack.
“Well whenever I have left a message, no one calls me back, so I’ve just given up.”
She slumps back in her seat and groans in a way that says her vertebrae are crumbling as we speak.
I have one more try. “I work every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I’m right by the phone – my boss calls me all the time – you could just ring then. I always answer.”
“Oh, I can’t remember to call on particular days love, I have to just call when I need to call.”
We stalemate, and speak of other things.
On the drive home, I reach over to my bag and something falls on me and runs away. I indicate and pull sedately over to the side of the road, where I erupt from the car and dance beside it, lit up by the headlights of passing cars, trying to make sure that whatever it was hasn’t got stuck in my shorts. I don’t know how she did it, but I know she did it.
The Help
Tuesday, 14 September 2004
There are ominous sounds coming from the bathroom. I cleaned it all yesterday except for the shower stall. I scrubbed the toilet, the basin, the scum from around the taps, vacuumned and shook out the bath mat. However. I know from past experience M has a fundamental disbelief that I can ever clean the bathroom to meet his high standards. Of course, these standards only arise when guests are imminent. This morning I cleaned the outside of the shower stall with window cleaner, and coated the inside with shower cleaning stuff for him to wash off when he cleans underneath the wooden slats that you stand on, boatlike, that are impossible for me to get out.
“Did you do the walls inside the shower?” he asks loudly, with a dangerous politeness.
“No,” I try to shriek in modulated tones from my seat in the study, “there wasn’t enough shower cleaning stuff left – but I did the glass walls and the whole thing to just above ankle height where it gets manky.”
“Righhhhhht.” I hear him heave the sort of sigh that questions my right to existence. Like it was my fault that the shower cleaner ran out.
He’s still in there – things are being banged around just a little bit too loudly…
Update: All fine – we are companionably working our way through a carton of Coopers Sparkling Ale – alllll is right with the world.
Red Whine & Sandpaper
Thursday, 16 September 2004
M & J drank two of those litre bottles of red wine last night! Chris and I stuck to a couple of beers and stayed up to watch it all fall apart 
This morning I let the cats out of their nighttime quarters, rescued a little dragonfly with a wet wing from the only drop of water in the kitchen sink and shorted out the safety switch on the house by trying to boil the kettle without any water. M is outside back to sanding Oomoo. He checked the website last night and was truly horrified at what we have spent so far. I tried to explain that we would never have been able to buy a little boat outright, so paying for it in dribs and drabs is actually the best (and only) way for us to do it. I don’t understand how he’s standing, let alone sanding, after his efforts last night. He hasn’t even had breakfast yet. I’m off to make a pot of tea.
Lost Weekend
Sunday, 19 September 2004
The weekend has been lost in a haze of fishing, sun, fishing, hostliness, fishing, beer, fishing and playing games of cards. Last night I learnt Gin Rummy and Manila – tonight I trounced M and Chris and was Gin Rummy Victor – Chris them promptly savaged me at a game of Concentration – I got five pairs – she got the rest. Hopeless. M is having a flounce, proclaiming that including the cost-count on mysmallboat is a ‘stupid idea’. I would beg to differ, but I’m going to make Chris watch the ‘Cat Orgy‘ episode of South Park instead.
The Catch
Monday, 20 September 2004
We set off this morning to Burrum Heads, hired a boat, and were motoring off into the blue yonder by about 11:15am. Chris had been desperate to get on the water at some point during her ‘holiday week’ and when we finally admitted to ourselves that Oomoo simply wouldn’t be ready in time, hiring a boat was the only remaining option (besides borrowing M’s brother-in-law’s leaky tinny – which I refused to do). We settled down to some serious fishing, with concentration borne of the knowledge that it was Chris’s last big chance to show her fish prowess. It was unfortunate that I neglected my hostly attempts at being considerate and landed a mo-fo bream with amazing drama and astounding finesse. I hadn’t had any bites prior to this, and so was somewhat mentally underprepared.
For Example:
Something big and whalelike bites my line.
B: A whale! A whale! I’ve got a WHALE!
Chris: Oooh. Look at her rod! It must be a whale [with dawning hope] …or maybe a crocodile…
M: It looks big! It looks big!
B: It is big. It’s a MO-FO!
[Shrieks repeatedly, thus alerting all other fish in the perimeter that they were under potential threat. They leave.]
M: [turning into penis -powered fishing fuhrer] DON’T BREAK THE LINE! DON’T BREAK THE LINE!
B: Shut up M. SHUT UP. How do I ‘not break the line’? The whale is going to break the line, not me. Be QUIET.
Chris: [giggles, and looks wistfully at my line that is bending in a 'U' shape toward the sea.]
M: [is momentarily cowed] Just concentrate on the fish…
B: Whale
M: Whale.
Chris: Go Bith! Pull it in! Pull it in!
I pull in a Very. Large. Bream.
We all cheer. In our innocence, we do not know that this is to be the solitary fish du jour. During the next four hours I;
1) Pull down the boat awning so it collapses on to Chris’s head,
2) Cast over enthusiastically, cutting Chris’s fishing line in half with my backswing, sending her sinker and her baited hook gracefully to the bottom of the sea,
3) Mishear M warning us that he’s about to do his cowboy style hand-reel cast; I thought he said “Look out for your heads and wallets,” and get his line wrapped around my Jarvis Walker FishHunter Series II. He insists he said “…heads and rods.”
But anyway – we had our first swim of the season and made it home in one piece – even my monster fish…I let him go.
Absorbing News
Wednesday, 22 September 2004
On Monday I recieved an odd shaped parcel in the mail. M looked perplexed, but I felt a genetic twinge and realised that I knew what it contained. Two sponges. Not just any sponges. High class sponges. Sponges that, if they had names, would be called Barbara and Felicity. Harrumph. When my Dad came to stay a few weeks back, he whined like a baby about how useless our sponges were – and sadly, he was fairly close to the mark. We get them in bulk from Bunnings and they scour a hundred times better than they absorb – i.e. they don’t. He threatened that he was going to send us some ‘proper’ sponges in the post when he returned to civilisation…and lo….! Now we have two, high priced, fancy sponges (this is from the man who thinks that spending anything more than $10 on a bottle of wine is dire treachery) and I am waiting for them to prove their worth.
Perfection. So Close.
Saturday, 25 September 2004
M is having trouble. I am nearing the status of perfect girlfriend and he’s beginning to look gun shy, gazing about with the whites of his eyes rolling hither and thither. Not only have I started dragging him into shops filled with boating accessories, today I dragged him to Bunnings [gasp] and then made him sit out the Grand Final in the pub (the pub that we have only ever been to once before – last Grand Final day). There I proceeded to drink beer with him, share chips and a noxious garlic pizza, while wearing thongs, a singlet and paint splattered shorts (the visit to the pub was not planned). Had it not been for my brassiere I would have had a free pass to blokedom. Unfortunately I missed ascending the pedestal after I knocked beer over M and refused to walk to the end of the pier with him after the game finished. So near…but yet so far.
Visitations
Tuesday, 28 September 2004
Lisa and D arrived on Sunday, after leaving Melbourne at about 3pm on Friday. That is a B-I-G drive. However, they made it in one piece and came bearing gifts – and a bottle of Hardy’s Oomoo Shiraz. They thought it was a coincidence. I told them that the boat was named in honour of the wine, but that I would spit some over the bow at the launch (not wanting to bash the boat with a bottle – waste of wine, and bad for boat). So despite some drunken debauchery on the first night by the boys, we have all been rubbing along nicely. Lisa and I rabbit on about crime novels and risotto, the boys dig holes, fill them with concrete and posts and say they’re building fences.
Of course, I have to work today, Wednesday and Thursday, so they have wisely decided to take their 4WD over to Fraser Island (after much deliberation) for a night or two. So M and I are in the peachy position of having guests that aren’t actually here! It’s kind of nice, in a weird kind of way. M spent all day sanding. Not the usual kind. He was spreading out the ten tonnes of sand we had delivered (thank god for evil credit card increases). Check it out!
This makes such a difference. It has settled all the horrible dust. We’re going to sprinkle grass seed everywhere asap (and try to forget that It Still Hasn’t Rained).
Rude Awakening
Wednesday, 29 September 2004
I was stumbling around the outside of the house this morning, watering my garden that insists on drooping pathetically from about 10am to 3pm regardless of how lovingly I tend it. The mulch I bought isn’t very good (but it was cheap, and now I must suffer) so I have begun sticking the hose into the ground next to each of the bigger plants – the Nerium Oleander, Alyogyne Heugelii, Brunfelsia latifolia, Tibouchina Jazzie (?!), Tibouchina Alstonville and my favourite rampant climbing jasmine that I’m training to cling to the front steps. Then I went around the other side of the house, which gets even more sun, to water my three different daisies, and then moved down to sprinkle the natives – who don’t seem to need as much attention. Callistemon viminalis, Callistemon Cameo Pink and a couple more variations on the type. I reached the second one – still drowsy eyed from a bad sleep – and tipped the watering can over a bit further to fill a depression in the earth near the base of the shrub. There was no warning; with a horrible sucking sound a GINORMOUS cane toad leapt vertically out of the ground I was watering and bounded like a small dog under the house. If our neighbours weren’t awake already, I helped them along by shrieking like a B-grade schlock horror movie screen goddess. M doesn’t even come running anymore. He just sauntered around the corner a few minutes later, assessed the tableau of me, watering can and huge cane toad exit hole – shrugged, looked skywards, and went back to the boat.
Traction
Thursday, 30 September 2004
Some days the feeling of just wanting to rip off ones own face, and then the rest of ones skin to allow oneself to morph into a cool quiet shallow pool of innardly organs is almost too much to resist. So is the option of removing ones eyeballs and leaving them to bathe in a in a lightly chilled bath of saline. I take the Vitamin B, but still they bite me. May begin drinking straight citronella oil.
Update: OK, after seeing this, I really have not much to moan about.