Look what happened!!

There was this:

Then a few minutes later, there was this:

 Happy 100,000 car :)

Oooooo exciting

iPhone 6 just arrived :)

Fire Services Museum

It might have taken me 9 years, but today we finally got to the Fire Services Museum, which is just around the corner from work. When we moved into the 8 Nicholson Street building, we decided it would be nice to nip out for a lunchtime adventure to the Fire Services Museum. Hmmm it took me a while, but today we got there. It was quite good. Here are some photos.

A battery

Craig

Me

A painting

Me with a fire engine

Me in the old control center

The main clock

arrrgh

Given that today is talk like a pirate day, I thought this was appropriate

My pirate name is:

Mad Bess Kidd

Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Big day of caching ahead

Starting in Ballarat and heading towards Smythesdale, 18km on a rail trail.  It was just going to be me, then one other.  Now there could be as many as 6 of us!  The geocaching Melbourne facebook page has been working hard.
The weather should be cool, but nice, so I'm hoping for a good day.
Report to follow

POP!!!!

tinkle tinkle tinkle.....
and the projector lamp died.  I mean it's not like we have been ignoring the little message about replacing the globe for nearly year and it has had done more than 2800 hrs for thing that was only surposed to do 2000 hrs.
Oh well, no TV this weekend.  We might have to have a conversation.

cleaner

So I have been thinking we should get a cleaner for a while now, but it I am a but of a tight arse and that has been competing with my inner lazy.
In the end, I was finally able to find a justification.  We both work full time and that more commitments than we really need (and sometimes want).  We don't ever seem to get time to clean the house cos we are off doing our extra 'non-work' activities and then if we do dedicate a day to cleaning the house, once every blue moon or so, then we are both missing out on stuff we'd rather be doing.  Then the house gets dirty again anyway and I just feel bad all the time about how messy it is.
So I finally got around to ringing a friend of mine from work's cleaner.   The deal seems to be quite reasonable, so we'll give it a go and see if it works out for us.  So everyone, come and visit us (in a fortnight after the cleaner has come) and the house should be much cleaner than normal and you buddies that have allergies should find out house more pleasant :)

caching with the nephew

I had a nice day today, I went caching with Felix to an event called Geo Comp.  Some guys had placed 30 odd caches in a park in Brayside.  We teamed us with Mark, who was just there by himself, but he has two girls, so got along with Felix fine.  We ended up collecting 20 caches and walk about 9km, which was way further than I was expecting to walk.  The physio has said I should try to keep my steps to around 5-7k.  Today I walked nearly 15k.  oops.

Anyway, as I said, A fun time by all and we came 5 or 6th or something.  Not a bad effort for team "Crippled by a laser explosion" (guess which half of the name was mine and which half was Felix's)

Here is a picture of Felix and some dead trees

Hospital

So, my potential over night stay in hospital after some day procedure turned into 3 nights in hospital and turned into a fairly major bit of surgery. The very experienced doctor who did the operation described my case as 'the most serious case he'd seen in years'. Go me. Anyway he is very happy with the work he has done and most importantly (from my prospective anyway) I don't have to have a second operation.
I am looking forward to the next two or three months to seeing how much difference having all the 'gunk' removed makes to my general levels of tiredness and I hope I notice a difference. Next on the list after that is a holiday, so we can both just chill out and relax. It has been a very stressful few months waiting to get this sorted out. I am glad to be home.

Towel Day

Today is Towel Day! Which was invented as a tribute Douglas Adams.  For that day, you carry a towel around, in a reference to the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.  Here is a quote:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

And here is a picture of my towel (purchased at the Salisbury branch of Marks and Spencer) at work:

Not sure why the photo has a greenish blob in the middle....

Brag time

I have been involved in project managing a web application for a while at work. It is a Portal that has 5 different applications inside it. One of them is for the 20 odd Victorian water corporations to log into and do their annual dam risk reporting. The project was nominated for an award and, how exciting!?! We won :)

backlog

I've meant to post for ages, so I have a bit of a backlog of things to catch up on. Lets see if I can remember them all.

• We finally had a blind/shutter installed on the west facing lounge room window. Today has been the first really hot day since it went in and so far it's making a massive difference and i think it has proved very worth while.  
• The scottie club had the black and white match a couple of weeks ago, it was a good day, the weather started off a bit shit, then it turned fairly warm. Guthrie won a ribbon, with some competition, and actually beat another dog! Go Guthrie :)
• Mum had a birthday party, the first for a very long time, it went off very well.
• I had a massive day of caching down Hastings way, with Neil. We found a lot, it was very very hot. (ooo that rhymed, I am a poet)
• I was very clever and worked out how to sync my work calendar to my google calendar, which means it also syncs to my phone!! Yay I'm so clever, Lotus notes sucks.
• Mum and Kate and I went down to Port Fairy to do glass bead making for mum's birthday present, we all made some pretty beads and and now have a greater appreciation for the ones other people make. it's harder than it looks.
• Dog school has closed it's indoor venue and is moving to delivering classes in a different format :( not sure how I feel about that yet.
• Bronwyn and Sarah (my two pregnant friends) are now 2 and 6 weeks weeks away from having their babies, i had really better get knitting!! 

The dogs have been being good. Neil is outside working on someone else's car, on a 37 degree day. Mad.  I have also been good, but my hip hasn't.

Water restrictions are off

So I might have had a bit of a height advantage, but I promise I was as wet as the other two (Felix started off with the hose, that was a mistake)

nearly white Christmas

So we nearly had a white Christmas, in Melbourne, in Summer. Does a whole heap of hail count? Here are some photos and a video.

Sad day

I know this is really quite old news now, but it has taken me a while to write this port. On the 21st of October, we had to make the decision to have Molly put to sleep. Molly was approaching 16 years old, and with the exception of the last two years, had not had a single health problem her whole life. Her run ins with Cushings Disease and having to have her eye removed had both knocked her in the last little while, but even so she continued to be a happy girl, and to boss the pupps around. In the end, she wasn't in any pain, but her kidneys had failed, she had developed a very evil sounding cough and was mostly sleeping all the time. Neil was with her at the vet at the end, as I was in Canberra. Neil made her a lovely box and we have buried her in the front yard.

I will always miss her, and am glad to have had her with me for such a long time.

This is an older photos of Molly, looking the way I like to remember her.

Shiny new

Following my mothers excelent example, I have gone out and bought myself something shiny and new. Not a mini laptop in this case, but a new camera, which if I do say so myself, I sorely needed. My ye olde Olymipus µ camera really hasn't been up to scratch for a while and I haven't liked the photos it has been producing for a while (The link is to a similar one, I think mine is even older).
So today we went off to have lunch, across the road from the Digital Camera Warehouse and I bought one of these:


It's one of these. To , I went in to get one of these, but in the end, the camera I got takes better photos in low light, and that's what I have been least happy with on my current camera, so I decided that even though it's a bit larger than I was thinking, I think I will be very happy with it.

Also in news from our house, on Tuesday, the electricians came back and did the last of the work, except the spiffy light switches, which I have to ring them about. The kitchen looks amazing!

Eurovision 2011

So it was Eurovision. I had my thrid annual party. I had everying this year!! three fondues (oil, cheese and chocolate) beer kransky sausages (which we forgot to cook) sauerkraut (oops, forgot this too) wine and bubbles. We a great turn out and everyone had a great time. Here are some photos:

Eurovision 2011

It was a great party and as Azerbaijan won I am going to seriously look in to having a holiday there next year. I have already discovered that there are 8 caches there and one of them is an earthcache :)

Meet the new mower

Don't you love the way the dog paths show up so well, even after mowing them

80's Wedding

This is me and the bride, doesn't she look lovely?

arrival

Look what I got!!