Last month

Hmm, tried putting 2 high speed cameras onto one PC causes only one to work properly. So it looks like I'm limited to just one camera in each direction, without pushing the expense of upgrading CPU & motherboard hardware (again).

OK, another week has passed, I'm still slack on getting recent photos processed & I'm going in next week for another colonoscopy because I'm pretty sure he'll find another haemorrhoid. So I get to shit through the eye of a needle again in preparation for it.

On a happier note, the garden continues to produce surprises - new flowers & bulbs keep popping up. We have attacked the compost bin to see what what hiding inside  - turns out to be what looks like a heap of builders sand, topped off by a big chunk of tree (& a potato!) - back to the original design on that one, then. Julie is now starting to learn about the different kinds of dirt you can have - such an eye-opening experience for a former apartment dweller. The birds continue to delight us with their antics & the strawberries are now flowering.

And it's magpie nesting season again, which means it's also magpie swooping season. Julie was again gobsmacked by watching a cyclist get attacked by one & specifically recalls hearing the thwack as it pecked at his helmet. And then one morning, we saw someone walking with a magpie following him as if it was his pet! We got swooped ourselves taking the dogs for a walk, but fortunately it was a half-hearted attempt at defining his territory rather than a full scale attack. Then today I saw a cyclist with what looked like little aerials sticking out of his helmet. After I had thought about it for a moment, I realised that they were cable ties, fastened to the helmet, with each one looped between the air slots in the helmet, with the end sticking upwards out of the helmet. Ingenious!

Friday night we got together with some former colleagues of Julie from CASA at a club in the city. We managed to convince them to buy some tickets in the meat tray raffle & between us, we won a carton of light beer & a meat tray. So we then adjourned to our place to drink some of the beers & barbecue the meat. Great impromptu party & great to have people here for a change.

After many more chunks of time were spent practising for the MOST, the day of the test dawned all too quickly. We went for one last practise in the car park at Exhibition Park, & discovered to our great surprise that the run for testing the braking was in the middle of a driveway & we could actually use it. So we practised until we were happy with our runs & headed off out to the testing centre. With 5 of us in the group for the pointed time, the tester was going to take us in alphabetical order, which would have put Julie first, so I volunteered to go ahead of her. I worked my way through the left turn, controlled stop, cone weave, u-turn & quick stop easily. Then coming down the run for the obstacle avoidance, with the tester's words ringing in my ears, "swerve to the side that I am on", I realised that I was setting up for the other side! Instant fail! So I did a very fast re-evaluation & did manage to swerve to his side, but turned too early & clipped the cone. One the second run, I was set up properly & nailed it, completing the whole test with no errors.

Then it was Julie's turn. She started out OK, but clipped a cone & started swearing at herself inside her visor. Then she clipped another cone & apparently was swearing even more. Now if she had pulled her self together at that point, she had only lost 5 points for the cones & still had 3 up her sleeve, but she was starting to lose concentration by now & didn't eyeball the tester on the u-turn. Remember me saying on my first crash that I wasn't looking where I wanted to go, but was looking down at the road? And I just drifted off the road, because I had no focus? Same principle, & she went over the line on the u-turn, lost another 5 points (8 is the maximum) & her test was terminated. She was not happy, but I have to say she held up quite well for the rest of day!

The garden is now taking shape, as new things keep coming up to replace the Spring bulbs & the Forget-me-nots. At a local school fete, we bought some parsley plants. Then headed for the hardware store for a hose connector, so that we can connect the outlet from the washing machine to the garden hose & empty the grey water onto the garden. We came home with: the hose connector, garden stakes (yes they were on the list), tomato plants, some celosia, which has a colourful central spike flower, & 20 plastic chairs for our annual Thanksgiving party (we bought the tables last year). We had to borrow their trailer to get it all home. Anyway, then I had to figure out where the best "full sun" position is, so I found myself standing in the garden at various locations, trying to look like a tomato plant. Turns out the best spot is right in front of the dining room door. Handy! And I've put down some snail bait. Datsun of course wanted to get involved in the tomato planting & I could see he was heading for where I had laid the bait. So we ended up having a snarling session, where I was trying to slap him out of the garden, the bushes were too tall (all of 6 inches high) for him to leap through easily, & him snarling at me. Hmm, might have to do some more assertion as "top dog".

Kelly has been booked in for a haircut for weeks now, as Mandy who does his trim is extremely busy. She's very good with the dogs, so we left her set up with a power lead, water hose & cash, & headed off to work. I had dropped Julie off in the city & was heading back to Deakin when she called to say that she couldn't catch Kelly to clip him. So I headed off home instead, but she had finally just caught him when I arrived. Probably something to do with her walking directly into their territory & them defending it. He certainly looks much neater now - he was starting to look very scruffy.

We've had a few problems lately with the dryer not drying the clothes properly, resulting in the damn thing being hoisted off the washing machine & dragged out into the dining room for some maintenance. It's heavy! I wondered why we had water dripping out of the bottom of it as we were moving it, then realised that there is a condenser that needs to be cleaned out every few months. Which kinda explains why it wasn't pushing the condensed water out particularly well! The upshot of this was that we started putting the clothes out on the line each morning, & discovered that it was kinda nice to do this task together. And a bit of a shock to the former apartment dweller, who has always used a dryer for everything. The Aussie on the other hand, does prefer his shirts to not be "crunchy" from being on the line all day, so we've compromised to somewhere in between.

Also the detail of our current water restrictions have come as a bit of a surprise to Julie, as she has started to realise that our water is not an endless resource. We can water the garden only by a hand-held hose for 6 hours in a 48 hour cycle. And that realisation has prompted discussions on how we can better use what we have, although she still hasn't come round on the idea of showering over a bucket! We do now empty the washing machine directly onto the garden & we're looking at buying a rain water tank.

Meanwhile, Duncan is talking much better & actually talks to us over the phone. It's cool!

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This page was last updated on 12-Dec-2010.