Photo catch up!

8 days

Wow, finally after an 8 day week at work - it wasn’t supposed to be but somehow it was - I have a day off. The kids are having a play and I have some hours to run a few errands and talk with you.

I’ve plainly started my new job, my first true taste of management and it is busy. Busier than I could have imagined. A lot of the “busy-ness” comes from re-organising my office. I say re-organising but perhaps that should just read organising… anyway I spent six hours on Australia Day clearing it up and at the end of the day it felt sorted.

I am of course still trying to get on top of “what works” and I’m sure that will be continually improved as the job unfolds itself. Anyway I thought I was organised until my predecessor landed another whole pile of stuff on my desk to think about. I need another week just to catch up to now which means of course that I’d still be a week behind.

I woke bolt upright in bed this morning remembering two urgent things that I hadn’t done - so much for my work-free day. Still since then, apart from monitoring my team’s output and sending just one email, I’ve been pretty good and boy do I need the break.

I think overall I will really like this job - I do feel quite energised and certainly am motivated to go into work and work hard. The lesson this week is to conserve my days off as certainly my work and my homelife suffers when I don’t have them.

Speaking of kids it’s back to school tomorrow and I think they are quite looking forward to it. We went to the school today to check the class lists and number one son has a new boy in his class and number one daughter has a new girl. She is in a mixed year class this year which will be interesting. Hopefully it will push her a bit harder - I think she will benefit from that.

Mungbeans and Macchiatos

We went to visit Rosneath Farm on the weekend. Its an eco-village… Plainly got a long way to go but a start.

Many of the houses on their are straw bale houses and they were quite impressive. Rotaloos (composting toilets) are the norm and the roofs (which must be green) are covered in solar panels.

For a moment Rory and I were lulled into a green dream of throwing up sticks and heading south for the seachange, building a straw house and eating mungbeans. I think what put me off was the main guys description of eating pigeon (they grow meat pigeons - apparently delicious slow cooked in the solar oven) and home butchered kangaroo. The property abounds with them and they have to cull about 150 a year.

It’s not the thought of eating Masu (as was once suggested as an alternative name) but I just don’t think I’m up for cutting them up on my kitchen table. I would have to go vegetarian.

Now he would argue that that is the benefit of living in a village. Others would do that and you would do other things to earn barter credits or Lets. And there’s the rub. We just couldn’t think of too many skills that would be helpful in an eco-village.

And the bottom line? We just weren’t sure the solar panels would run our coffee machine.

Frothin’

I went surfing yesterday (yes, me) and have the injuries to prove it.

I was stupidly holding onto my toe rope when a wave ripped it out of my hand and now my hand is really sore. So are my arms and shoulders. But it was fully sick. (note surfing terminology).

The kids got it straight away and my girl in particular looked very Gidget like as she rode (standing up) all the way into the beach. I think both of them are hooked.

I’d tell you who was coaching us… ah but that would be name-dropping and that’s not my style. I learned a few terms though that you might like to drop next time you’re down the beach.

Frothin’ = really good, awesome
Frost = beer
Fully sick = great
Filth = expression of appreciation like Wicked

They all start with the letter F. I don’t know what that means.

I think next time we head south we might sign up for some more lessons…

Thoughts on the Pandemic

I’ve been thinking about HN51 - the avian bird flu - which this week killed some people in Turkey (no bird pun intended).

It reminds me of how we all reacted in 1999 to Y2K. Remember that? There were concerns that power would stop, computers everywhere would malfunction and that there would be widespread chaos.

And then as the clocks ticked over - nothing happened. There was no chaos. Just a big party.

The skeptics were smug.

But there might have been chaos had not computer experts all over the world worked very hard to fix the problem in the year or so leading up to it.

Now we don’t know when the pandemic will happen but surely we should be treating bird flu like Y2K and work as hard as we can to stop the problem.

Then when the danger is passed the skeptics can crow and the rest of us can heave a sigh of relief and know that we worked bloody hard to avoid a catastrophe.

Friend of Dorothy

It occurs to me that the next generation will think you are a fan of The Wiggles when you say you are a “Friend of Dorothy”.

New year resolutions

I wasn’t going to post resolutions or even make them but I have been inspired by Mrs Hardly. The idea of going back a year to see your time capsuled resolutions appeals so here we go…

In no particular order…

1. Keep a food diary - the only reliable way to control intake.

2. Continue exercise program - I’ve been pretty good up to now and don’t want the good work to stop.

3. Make sure the pool filter basket is emptied daily.

4. Keep on top of the reticulation.

5. Garden at least once a month.

6. Stop putting boring jobs (like proof-reading and organising baby-sitters) til the last minute.

7. Try not to take things too personally.

8. Remember to take folic acid to control weepy pms symptoms before I start taking things too personally.

9. Do my tax on time (that means doing last year’s too).

10. Get on top of my savings and credit card accounts!

There, that feels better. Now I can ignore them for a year!

Placebos

I’ve been thinking about placebos. It was something I heard on Radio National, Professor Susan Greenfield mentioned, right at the end, placebos… well let me step back a bit.

Before that she mentioned chocolate. And this is an important bit. She said studies have shown that just smelling chocolate is enough to make your body fight disease more efficiently. She made the point, and I think it a good one, that we should have chocolate smelling scent in hospitals rather than that of disinfectant.

Then she went on to discuss the point that often if people think they are getting a drug when in fact they are only getting something that looks like a drug, in other words, a placebo, they still get the effects of the drug they are not getting. It’s called the placebo effect.

But it got me to wondering. How on earth do you tell if a drug is working or not if even if you don’t give the drug you get the same effect??

And doesn’t that mean that the drug is working, even if you only think it is working?

Maybe in the future all we’ll need are thought drugs. A kind of reprogramming that gets your body to sort itself out.

Or is that just hypnosis?

You’re right. It would need to be a thought drug given in pill form.

A thought pill.

There is no single word given to describe the back of the knee

True.

Is that because when you stand up there is no “back of the knee”? Or rather when you sit down it is naught but a crease? A wrinkled line to separate thigh and calf. Is there ever a need to describe it? It would be an ambitious mozzie that managed to suck your blood from that particular spot and that is really the only sentence I can think of that would require such a word.

Ah bloody mozzie! Got me on the ………..!

Actually it turns out there are quite a few references to the area on the web so it seems a word for this place is required. But what word? Perhaps we could do the Douglas Adams thing and choose a town name to describe the back of the knee (see The Meaning of Liff).

Xantippe springs to mind, shall we take it for a walk?

Here are some sample sentences:

Also common is for kneecap pain to be felt in the Xantippe.

A Baker’s cyst is a swollen area in the Xantippe.

There are also several large tendons that cross the Xantippe and normally help prevent hyperextension.

So I guess you want to know where Xantippe is now…

The discovery of a number

A house number to be exact. One we never knew we had…

You see today Groover (I’ve decided to use his handle or part of it) and I decided we would “bounce” out of bed and tackle the reticulation. A problem we have been in denial in for over a year but because the quote came in at $3500 to replace it we thought we’d just see if we could fix it ourselves.

So by 8.30 we are on the verge.

Our plan:
1. rake the leaves
2. survey the damage
3. head to hardware store
4. replace components at least on two front lawns (don’t ya hate corner blocks)
5. fertilise and spread soil wetting agent.

So we’re doing the survey and we note that one sprinkler while fine is blocked a bit by some overgrown shrubbery. I get the shears and start chopping - but you know how it goes - then I think I’ll just chop the hedge back a bit so people can use the path rather than walk on our sand (it once was lawn), and then well the virginia creeper had rather got out of control and was about 30cm thick with dead undergrowth in places so…

Now our “green” bag is full and the wall (which has some fretting problems I won’t go into) is bare and there was the house number we never knew we had.

I’m hoping a spot of Brasso will make it a bit more obvious - no more calls from pizza companies unable to find our house!!

I hate and I love doing the retic. It was fun doing it with grumpy Groover because it’s always fun doing a grotty job together or at least you don’t feel quite so ripped off that you’re doing it while he is inside on the computer AND it is very funny when the top comes off the sprinkler and he gets a soaking!

I did sneak out and play bridge (we came third, thanks for asking) and when I came back Groover was still outside viewing the effect of his hard work watering the wetting agent in. So then I had a go on the front little garden. It is SO satisfying when you can make it work. Just a few more bits to get and we are home and er well, hosed!

Of course as soon as we finished one full cycle you know what happened…

Yes. It started raining.

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