relativity- a good weekend

This Easter weekend was FIVE days long here in Oz. Here is another look at the weekend done earlier

Because of the alignment of the moon and the sun, and things we have to celebrate other wise it is not the Western World, and a world war nearly a century ago; a four day weekend was added to, by the Anzac memorial holiday.

Some would say that it was almost a week of bloody awful football. Did my team win, still do not know...

Leaving

Close shave-ers

Another trivial pursuit of cleanliness.

In more ways than one.

After a shower pondering, I thought I should better clean up my ablution-istic accecessorizing belongings...

After all, with three kidliwinks also sharing the large bathroom, a good example may work!

I have given shaving up. "For Lent", ROFLOL.I am pretty sure that at least two people are throwing their hands up in shock and horror clutching their (female) cheeks and a "oh, it makes you look So Old, get rid of it!" So far, a client or two have been like that as well. What?  I cannot see the problem. My face! Winter is coming along. Even with Global Warming Accelerating as hard as it can, it is still going to be cooler around here for a few more months, so what the hell? The gels are being annoying- "ooh, it's so thick!"

Ruffling through my basket of stuff on the shelf, I found a few odds and sods... a twenty years plus collection of the best and worst blade shavers, IMHO.

My first shave, a twin-blade Gillette Contour is not there, but there a few others. The Mach series is not that great. They may have five blades, but they sure don't last that long for me. The vibrator handle doesn't turn me on at all, it still shaves the same as the triple blade.

The Quattro from Schick does a good job, and the replacement blades are usually cheaper and last longer than the Gillette ones. Go figure? The earlier Schick's were not great, but adequate. A change was as good as a holiday was probably the reasoning behind the defection...

The Wilkinson Sword was a souvenir from Grantham, UK, 2001. It was not that great either.

Now I am using the one from Aldi - an in store no-name brand I suppose. It works really well for a triple blade, and the only thing I reckon would be better for it would be a trimming blade like the Mach and Quattro have.

Another Ponderant was that this is a way of digitizing my memories... for me, later...

S'weird aint't it, all the shite we manage to accrue over the years, and think nothing of it?

spoilt, nah, don fink so

I put some dosh away for rainy days, birthdays, holidays.

Split between the four prodigiously intellectually endowed progeny. #1 is also good with money.

The others are more consumeristically orientated, somewhat like me, unlike their immediate late relative, and other relatives, relatively.

The monies slowly saved and under sufferance [well, not really] have all but been dissipated into the maws of the local businesses that manages oh so well to attract any spare dosh, the bastards, that I have slavishly saved...

This week, it may have been noted that son#2 accosted me for nu shuz. And today, some pants and flanno shirts on spesh. The gels nobbled me at Aldi's for MORE sox.

And catalogs are perused with an intensity of of, of, lost here, of of um, well like really intensely STUDIED for specials this week on iPods!

"Everyone else has 'em!"

True, after I helped out #1 early on this year, I got a surprise. His bonus Touch... handed-up, as it were.

After I made them think about saving a lot of their recently received berfdey munnys straight into a bank account---- the balance was available... Ooooo.

They had so wanted Something for the Easter Gurk trip, why, I don't know. They now have each a nice pink fifty five and half geared semi-downhill cross country road bike that have now been all of three times around the blocks and to poppies too worth of riding since xmas, as well as some other portable fold-up-able digital entertaining units. And games. And digital cameras.

I wrenched the saved munnys from the paws of that bank, and did a quick study of the local apples seed sellers. Bundles or not? Nah, got plenty of that extra stuff rotting away back at the mansion somewhere.

Got back from work, and mentioned that I had their munnys [and some of My money from payday cos if they had to wait to accumulate enuff it would be Well After Easter and so what then?] and would they like to go anywhere?

They would have beaten Flash to the wagon! Oh yeah!

Returning like winning prize fighters to the lounge, they were into the new Touches and downloading Apps like there was no tomorrow. [As there will be no money left after the getting extra food I now have to pour down their maws, there may not be a tomorrow after all.... wasting away tapping tap tap tapping]

And I said to one of them tonight as they were trying to access the internet from their toys in bed* (!), "I would like to replace the roofing tin one day"

Later to myself- like - here,  looks like that will occur after they are all married and moved out.

But two of em are twins, and so far the dowries are at nought... Like, I feel I have to double up for em all the time, cos sharing is sort of too old fashioned... Nah, they can be good like that, be cheaper too but, if I insisted on it all the time.

"Share the food please..."

I had a dream...

A dream knocked my usual shower ponderings off course this morning, after it came back to me, wet like.

The set up: using my hair brush. It is from Aber-bludie-deen, so it had done a few "stylings" since the early 90's... The bristle pad needs to be re-glued to the handle, again. Maybe time to give it up?

I was looking at the brush in the dream, and noticed it had another apartment under the pad, handle side.

"What the...?"

It was a another brush! For shoes!

I turned it over, took it out and tried it. It worked a treat.

"Well well!" [I think I would have said]

Then my dream self noticed a third brush! From the other end it appeared.

This one was for brushing lint off clothes! Wow!

A magical Russian dolls type brush, and for two decades I had never known about it!

Was there a fourth?

I may have woken myself up by then in the strangeness of the dream.

Weird dream. Because had been thinking of dumping it...

Dishewasher :-(

When the home buying urge was finally satisfied years ago, Tarn set up about setting the house up.

A studious saver and really good miser as previously noted, there was a working on upgrading the kitchen.

Little did I know about dishwashers, but that was an ideal she was reaching for. Her folks had had one installed about when she was a teen I think. Out of all our previous lodgings over the years,  only one had  ever had one.  We were in Aber-budie-deen years ago, and there was one in the apartment, along with the Combined Clothes Washing and Drying Machine In One With A Difficult Door Opening Sequence...

[That is, WAIT for the machine to cool down before ripping the door handle off... That cost two taxi trips to the repair Shop...]

So a well known dishwasher was sought after.


I installed it into its dedicated spot near to the kitchen sink, after removing the shelving that was too deep and too many. Rang the nearest plumber we thought was okay to plumb it all up. We had cleared out the kitchen cupboard below the sink and the guy plumbed it to the kitchen sink cold water supply.

He cleared more stuff below to wipe up some water...

And there was the dedicated water pipe outlets for a dishwasher!

ARGH! Shizenhozer.

Well, I said- would that have been a better plan...?

I wish I had found it earlier, cos what ever he put on the pipe join got into the cold water. Forever! Whether it was a lubricant or sealant, I can always tell the water out of that tap.
No where else is there that "industrial" taste.

Of course I called the fella back, and he said that IF there was anything coming into the water, it would go away soon enough. Ten Years Plus Now, Buddy! No way I would use J-----s again, nor S-----------s after the hot water story.

After shocks. The kettle Has To Be Filled With Water From The Hot Water Tap, otherwise tea or coffee tastes really really shitty to me! And no-one else can tell...

The dishwasher has had some major repairs- a pump, the holder for the top arm, the soap dispenser. For a 800 dollar machine, there was outlays twice for an attending technician at roughly three thousand dollars an hour to look at it before ordering the needed parts and then installing said parts for another smaller fee....

Whatever- who wants to make kids wash dishes? I paid the ransoms.

Last month the kids were complaining that the top tray was broken!

It was going to collapse!

Was I going to get a new washing machine?

The latest ransom was for the rollers for the top tray. There were twelve. Eight in use. Cannot work That out. However, if one plastic roller managed to break/crack, there was a spare.


A fortnight ago I ordered some new rollers, 12 would be nice, eight would do, [I would have ordered online but that occurred to me NOW] and the price there was- GUESS? I was actually charged ten bucks less than what the online suppliers charged for little bits of plastic- axles that clip onto the tray, with wheels. Diameter of a large coin!

SIXTY bucks!

bloody wifi

Referring to setting up a wifi aroon' the mansion.

Little bro handed-up a wifi modem router he didn't need (has about 100 kilometers blue cable wrapped around through and over his new house with sockets every 6 inches) so we (my kids) could maybe commune through a Wii machine with his kids ....

Good if he could remember the password. It turned out to be a good combination that was annoyingly hard and easy... marvined again.

But the Wii connection between the kids was not really that great, I think there are better ways of exchanging children's messages that are so EASY c.f. the bloody Wii!

Arhhh- "EASY"  The word has turned up twice now...

If I may also refer to this recent edition, I thought about unwrapping the dusty modem from its cosy resting place, and employing it to see if some new consumerist goods would also work wirelessly.

It worked okay. Took a bit of a fiddle.

By midnight was thoroughly pissed off, as most functions did work or had worked, but the manual said to change this setting or that setting and then nuthin worked after all that cos I wanted something else to work and it would not. One app.

Some Foolrooms  forums on apple crap said probably wont really get it to work unless you have two alter egos, not one, as in email sign in names. Bloody great.

More fkn addresses and passwords, bajizus. It's only a an app that works on WiFi and that sort of annoys me.

Facetime equals AdvancedTimeWasting at the moment [  sortta like this :-)  ]

But they are Happy.

Today.

Had to reboot, reset, and reread the fkn manual, and the bloody app still aint workin. Fk um.

Still connects all the lil 'ol pocket toys but the DSis are indubitably probelematic.


Bye

wordless

I took gel#3a to the hairdressers during the week.

She wanted a slanty half a fringe, and split ends done. Okay, Leigh, got it?

Yeah I don't know either.
A preteen thing?

We walked out the place and went to cross to the va-hee-cal, and noticed that there was a red car standing in the street crossing space used by the wheeled people [wheelchaies, prams, walking frames etc etc], like a ramp to the road from the footpath.

I did sort of stare at the car/occupants with a frown/scowl/questioning look upon my countenance.

Not sorta. Did. It was a no standing place, not even for the blue-sticker-wheeled people people! That was next to it.

Cos I thought that unless you really could not park elsewhere, you could do a blocky while waiting for the accomplice to return from dropping the video off. Well, I would. The boys-in-grey already have got me for a minute overstay in the school three minute parking bays!

As we crossed the street, I looked back as the car pulled out.

The window came down on the drivers side, and a mean scrawny woman face appeared.

"Oh! Did I ruin ya day?" was called across the main street.

I don't think quick after a put down. From a stranger as well. So I did not respond with anything. Not even a finger.

What was worse was that I thought the woman was a mom at the kid's school. Great. Just fuckin great.

Now that ruined my day.
Stewing on that for days.
The term "That bitch!" just occurred to me, days later.

Foxey Grape Vintage 2011

Da Da...


Picked the Foxy Garage Grapes yesterday, 33 kg at 22 Baume. Not sweet enough, but certainly STICKY!
The ants, bees and birds thought it was time to harvest, so I did. Bugger them!

So in the end, today, crushed and pressed about 15 liters out at 1.080sg, and have some pomace to distill too! I could not press out the skins 100%. Plenty of flesh, so what the? Added 2kg sugar and 2 liters water. That worked last year, terrible tasting, but enough % to put through the still!

So PMSd the must so to put commercial yeast in for the fermentation, and will let the pomace ferment off the indigenous yeast. 

Stay tuned- I intend to try a sherry variety this year!

kids say the dangest fings, don they?

My gel#3a said something the other day, not weird, but funny and I cannot remember it.

That's so annoying.

Anyway, Son#1 is doing fine. According to the latest news, finding his feet okay in the Big Smoke.
Accomplished first assignment anyway, 25 hundred words.... First of Many! Hahaha. Do well lil one, I scraped through with the minimum, but enjoyed it all anyway. And got to see the world, and bring you up.

#2Son is getting to be a financial drag on my deficit. I was collared the other day;
"Pweesz git me sum nu skate shuz at the cool shop? 70% off?!" at the supermarket door...
Och boy, timing!

The weekend: was at the movies as I could not let gel#3b watch Rio with her friends and not let #3a miss out cos she wasn't having a sleepover with that group. Could I?

So off we went agin, n jus made it. New 3d glasses, cos mine were missing... Och! The movie was okay, but now that I read Updates@10, I would like to see Rango too.

A great start to the holidays in any case. For us, but #3b's friend's mum, T, was sposed to do a run to pick them up from the other mum Sz halfway back from the beach, but the car broke down. Not such a great start to the hols for them, bugger.


Ah- I remember what the weird thing was #3 told me.

A friend had invited her to a youth group Friday evening. Now remember, or not, that I don't go on about the cults too much at home, and encourage the kids to be careful to use their own judgments in all things,  like ask questions especially when you want to confirm an inkling of the answer.

She remarked that there appeared to be some attempts at brainwashing and encouraging people like her to join a group to introduce her into their community. And someone gave her a bible too.

She does not want to go back if it was always like that, even though it was fun and friendly. I replied that was okay, once a month or so instead to be with a friend would be alright, eh?
We'll see. I said the book was okay, and should read it. By the time I got to high school and was into SF I would reread it as a history of civilisation in all its gory and glory, a great long anthology.
[Thanks Erich Anton Paul von Däniken. ]

We are not religious, but it is a part of the world we live in. Society would like a bland well behaved and tithing population to run soothly, and faiths have developed ways for a large amount of people to get on, either tyrannically controlled or commercially co-opted into it. I myself agree with a lot of people that the 10 commandments have a lot of good ideals among the list, mainly the ones on how to get on with each other.

I try to have a well run home, we all have out things to do, and I don't like a rough table. A democratic tyranny? Some one has to be in charge, and as long as they step out clean, well mannered...

stopping or quitting and consequences

So I stopped buying cigarettes again the other day. Think I am coping...

Since. Had three glasses of wine. Reduced the coffee intake cos of lack of time only. Not taking a lotta interest in the kids or other people either, attention going from the 'Fear and Loathing:On the Campaign Trail 72' to TV to newspaper to PC and blogs, kids, and back to work, housework, kids, Alcoholery and back to the book, back to TV, kitchen... cycling...

Last night: slept from midnight for aboot nine hours and had a headache all day.

Not QUIT smoking, which is what they all want you to do.

Like as if I have a really short attention span at times, no little project really completed in the allotted time.


When I was working in the oil patch, there was no smoking close to the well head.
Then no smoking at all off shore by the nineties. Nearly none on shore sites too.
So by ten years ago, I could go without my usual five to ten fags a day 'habit' so easily for a fortnight easily.

I would leave the rig, get home, siddown an' 'ave a coupla smokes wif a few cans an' by dinnertime would have a hangover. Weird.

In comparison, some workmates COULD NOT give up temporarily, and would hide away somewhere on the facility and have a choof.

As if no-one could smell it on them! And some of these people were surprisingly pretty high up in the rig hierarchy, which impressed me, because besides the usual three warnings, there was also the sack. So you get the sack for it, lose a hundred-plus-grand a year and forever after: 'sacked cos he smoked at work!'

My Tarn's aunt Dot smoked a pack-plus right up to stepping into her coffin. Me dads gunna go the same way I think.  Back in Radelayde in the 80's I smoked Outside the apartment. I could not stand the smell on the curtains I could detect coming inside after a break of a few days away...

Once long ago, I did stop for while. Did not make me feel any better. Back on em.

Last year my sister-in-law and I stopped the same day, co-coincidently! Again, I did not feel any better for it. Certainly, the little cough was not there after a while, and the little Harmonica down my throat I could hear that summer had disappeared too... The wallet was better off. Ganuarie to Rocktober.

I broke, cos I couldn't stand not be able to have a fag and a drink when socialising with my other sister-in-law and hubby. Weak.

Then stopped again. The day they left for work outta town.

Then my eldest left home, and returning after dropping him at his new life, I went back to the rollies again.

And as the last rollie paper went up in smoke the other day, I thought that 60 bucks in my pocket a month was a good idea.

But- repeat :

So I stopped buying cigarettes again the other day. 

Since. Had three glasses of wine. Reduced the coffee intake more than half. Not taking a lotta interest in the kids or other people either, attention going from the 'Fear and Loathing:On the Campaign Trail 72' to TV to newspaper to PC and blogs, kids, and back to work, housework, kids, Alcoholery and back to the book, back to TV, kitchen... cycling... Divided attention and  and losing time.

Well, what's going on?

Update on the ex van delivery ad via facbook

Ah well.
Three weeks and only a few Likes, seventy impressions, and no calls to work.
Off with its head.
No matter the 'implorations' via the wall pages.

Apparently the Facebook way is not the way to spread the word for me, and bring so thoroughly ignored has been depressing, apart from some encouragement from #1 son and Dee. After all, having a few more Likes from the friend List may have begun a snowball effect. I think FB as a tool as well as a means to keep in touch is actually becoming unfashionable. [The gels would say different cos I won't let them use it or msn, I learnt my lesson there with #s 1 & 2.]

Live and learn, and now I am having second thoughts on putting an ad in Google Maps page for the area. Even moaning on about it here I seem a loser.

Money making is a risk venture, but I am a sole operator and wanting to stay that way. Making a bit more by 50%- 100% would be great.  Looking into other delivery services such as local postal systems looks like I need a new degree in transport/costs/thresholds/time/profits/losses. Just not enough here.

A geology degree ain't any good here either, apart from the calculus, statistics and spreadsheet efforts made to see how I am making any progress towards a profit. Noice graff.

Yeah. And I don't miss the "daily grind" of seeing the defriend grandstanding, may cut more off...

And if I hear anymore
crap about carbon taxes
and no smokestack fixes,
I will scream.

In the kitchen with.....

The gels, #3a & #3b, were given an eleventh birthday present on the weekend.

Ten years ago, we made some good friends, J and M, carers that initially were chosen by a committee, Bev, Pops and myself.  These great ladies were assigned to us as house and child carers through a care agency by an insurance claim due to the tragic sudden demise of my late wife Tarn in a road accident in 2000. I never knock the TAC, I just do not like their road advertisements advising us all to take care on the road or else...
Both these ladies became the primary choice for caring for my kids and the grandparent that lived in with me while I tried to continue with my new career working on a really uncertain work schedule with an oil & gas industry service company.

J and M I think really enjoyed such a challenge, twinnies of just 6 months and two primary school aged boys, and being with Bev and Ken too. Caring for these little rapscallions was just a day job that has turned into a great friendship, against the rules.

J texted me to see if we were home over the weekend to drop in. YES DO I replied.

Poor J, she limped over from around the corner- she had had another a knee operation, and was slowly getting about- and well she should, as of last month she is now a nan! At least the recovery should be in time to run after her new grandson when he starts crawling!

 

 

Anyway- she came in for a coffee and talk with two bags. In it were a cooking present!

Now the gels are all kitted out, ready to leave a huge bloody mess to make Dada and the rest of us all some bikkies/cookies/mini muffins.

 

If you could see them back when though.

work ad- trying too hard and marvined by it, and a defriending pain

Facebook and I may be ending our relationship.

My first try at mass media advertising has turned out to be less than an exhilarating experience against the exuberance I exhibited exploring exploitable explosive-like potentials in new media of the new millennium.

A dud even.

I wanted my [comparatively minuscule, admittedly] list of friends to "Like" my Delivery Service Ad. Maybe gush on about it...  [a thought- should I link it and try for some complete outsiders, with no hope of a excellent well mannered delivery, hitting it? Hmm, might try], and spread it to others.

And only got six. 6! After a few weeks.

Good thing I suppose.

I would not want to be rushed off my feet now, would I? Doh, maybe? For a buck- I do have to get the gels onto/thru secondary school.

There has been quite a few 'impressions'- over 50 in fact. Maybe my service could not reach them. Sorry, but I have to set limits, my good nature and caring paternal extincts instincts can not be bought for just a few dollars more, that extra inch. Okay. Ten k's is the limit.

I may have been using that "Page" wrong, and will it go for a few days to see if anything changes. I was running the Page with my home page on as well and there may have been a conflict?  In any case, I cannot find the turn off or delete button for the Page, so I may have to unfriend myself completely and start again, which would be a right royal pain in the arse, as I have gotten so used to it being there in the background.

The Ad. It was a freebie too, and again I mention/use the word "admittedly". Like a chance to use Google- also another freebie offering, that is getting to be a bit more complicated to get involved with and looks like another failure on my part to appreciate the complexities of modern day advertising, vis-a-vis the internet.

Yes, I thought it would be like a pyramid scheme, everyone on the list would hop on board and it would multiply! They could even unlike it after a while if they wanted to.

A "paid for ad per click" investigation thru FB said there was a potential viewer base of twenty thousand locally! Yeah. Like, I pay FB for each "hit". Well, it would have been nothing to pay for so far!

And going thru the list of the potential helpers, one cropped up as a totally non-cooperative friend.  No matter my attention to an utterance, occasional like or comment the last few years. Because it was always a front and center a "me-me-me!" type thing, and some messages in support of whatever they were up to; but no feedback. No acknowledgement. So. My First Unfriend. Did not make me feel good, or bad- like a business decision, almost. A cleansing. Something less to fret about? They were a pain at times, being an exhuberant extrovert as it were. Usually funny, but going for a top gear panel spot may tell you what the public personae was like... Ah well there goes a spotty decade or two of contact. I thought he would have been a good supporter too.

Others on the list most probably think it's a losers proposition, trying the internet and FB to get work? I see plenty of other people through connections with photographic studios trying for my attention. Well.

Back to FB. The news on this site has been sparse lately. I do not think I am a gossip, but do like to know what my circle of friends are up to if what they have to say is interesting enough to tell the world at large. Or silly things anyway, like I have done- "I like a 16 year old Lagavulin whisky in my coffee nightcap". Read into that the wrong way...

After stewing on the FB ad and the defriending, not "catharta-sised" 12 hours later. Not even with a great dinner a few reds and some interesting TV!

Publish and be dammed, ea reservoir!