Salt and corrosion

This week: I won a prize! We have a bi-monthly (as in, once every two months) all-department Zoom meeting, about sixty people. Since we have been working from home, as a morale-boosting thing, our great-grand-boss created the Wheel of Joy as a way to end the meeting. The Wheel of Joy is an animated roulette wheel (on a PowerPoint) that gives out first, second and third prizes to random staff members. Usually a box of chocolates or a fruit platter (I suspect it depends on where our great-grand-boss, who is buying these prizes with his own money, has been shopping that week). Anyway, this week, I won third prize. Great-grand-boss was obviously feeling generous this meeting, as third prize turned out to be a small package from a local provedore, containing: a box of water crackers, a jar of quince paste, a box of honey popcorn and a chocolate bee. Very timely, given my cheese box is due to arrive on Monday.

In a sign life is returning to normal, this week the local theatre sent out an email announcing their roster of shows for the first six months of the year. Some tickets were still valid from last year, so I can just turn up on the new date; some were postponed and the cancelled tickets were re-issued; some shows were cancelled all together and so my account is in credit. So I've got tickets for five shows this year.

In a sign life is yet to return completely to normal, two days after sorting out those tickets, the theatre called to say the first show, on 19 February, is now cancelled as the performers are in Western Australia and can't cross the state border. Tickets for four shows, then.

Friday Five (on a Sunday)

Would you ever live in an underground house?
The nearest sort of underground house to me would be in Coober Pedy in South Australia (about 1,500 kms away). So sure, yes, I would live in an underground house if I wanted to live in the desert and become an opal miner. (Which seems unlikely.)

( And so on and so forth )

And finally: the last (so far) of my sunset dahlias. (There are two that haven't flowered yet.)

Three more days of work this week, and I have to go to the office on all three of them. I'll have to dress nicely! I'll have to think of what to have for lunch! I'll have to talk to people in person! How will I cope?

When I started writing this, I had a whole saga about signing up for my cheese box subscription, and how the gift coupon wouldn't work, so I would never get my cheese, woe, never, ever, ever, but in the meantime I emailed the company and a lovely person sorted it out. I should get my first cheese box next week. I am so excited about this, I cannot tell you.

One day last week I was doing my morning workout. Arms and shoulders that day, so I was standing there, doing things with hand weights, when I saw something moving in the doorway. A little brown spider, as big as my thumbnail. It stopped in the doorway, looking in my direction, and we faced each other like gunslingers. It ran towards me. I stood my ground. It kept coming. I stayed. Still it came. Still I stayed. It ran on. I blinked first, f-list. I took a step to the left. The spider veered towards me. I stepped back to the right. The spider veered towards me. I stepped over the spider and looked back. It stopped.

Spider crisis over, I continued my workout. Eventually, I had to get on the floor. I checked for the spider, but couldn't see it. Safe to get down. Until I was holding the weight in the air and realised the spider was on it, running down it towards my hand. How? Can they teleport?

I gave the spider a gentle flick so it landed on the floor just as Alistair appeared in the doorway. He saw it land and pounced. It ran. He ran. The spider stopped under the desk. Alistair stopped under the desk and sat, folding his paws, looking at the spider, daring it to move. They were still there when I finished my workout and left the room.

Honestly, the spider was definitely aiming for me. It must have thought I was a funny sort of tree.

A fews days late, but who's counting? Friday 5 for January 22: Every family has one

Who’s the nastiest flavo(u)r in the ice cream parlo(u)r?

Well. I don't particularly enjoy ice cream, so all of them? No, that's not really true. Maybe once or twice a year I will get an ice cream cone from one of the local ice creameries (not parlours), particularly if they have a stall at the farmers' market, and it's quite nice. But it will be a cold day in hell before I try the liquorice flavoured one.

( Etc. )

What better way to start the weekend than contemplating the pandemic?

1. Where do you get most of your pandemic-related news?
Probably on the ABC (Australia's national broadcaster) website, or via the daily newsletters from The Conversation and Crikey, which often link to sources elsewhere.

2. How do you feel about your local government’s leadership during this pandemic?
In Victoria we have been fortunate to have a Labor government at State level. They've made mistakes, but they have acknowledged them, instituted a Royal Commission to investigate them, and made some incredibly hard decisions about putting us in strict lockdown. Our State Premier told us he would be up front and taking questions as long as necessary; in the end he did one hundred and twenty straight days of press conferences. And it paid off: we are now past twenty-eight double donut days (no new cases, no deaths), which is the benchmark for eradication. (We are currently in the last step of restrictions, with face masks required indoors and some limits on gatherings.)

The less said about our useless Federal government, the better. If you ever see anything about Australia's success with the virus, know it was our States that did the hard work. Our Prime Minister was an active hindrance to the effort, but he's happy to take the credit for their work now.

3. What does your favorite mask look like, and about how many masks have you accumulated?
My mother was big on mask experimentation. We have about ten each, in different colours and designs, including some special glasses-friendly ones for me. I think my favourite is one in Japanese black and white scallops.

4. Where have you most often had takeout during this pandemic?
We have takeaway once a fortnight, and tried to vary where we got it from, including from some restaurants that had converted to takeaway for lockdown. The three regulars are probably the nearest Thai restaurant, the gourmet pizza restaurant and our local fish and chippery.

5. What new interests, skills, or hobbies have you picked up since mid-March?
I've learnt how to make focaccia, which, it turns out, is surprisingly easy. A good bread for beginners. (This is the recipe I started with.)

Making a daily entry easy on myself by doing another question meme. Primary school memories this time.

What was your favorite piece of playground equipment when you were a kid?
I don't think I had a favourite. Swings?

What do you remember about your first-grade teacher? Pick the earliest grade teacher you remember, if you don’t remember anything about your first-grade teacher.
This is slightly tricky as I try to work out what first-grade means. I suspect it is your first year of school? But here (in Victoria, not sure about other Australian states) the first year of school is called Prep. Grade One is the second year of school. Obviously.

It doesn't matter, because I had the same teacher for both. I went to a tiny, one-room primary school in the country that only had two teachers. Miss McNamara was in charge of Prep, Grade One and Grade Two; Sister Adalbert was in charge of Grades Three to Six. Miss McNamara was young with a gap between her front teeth. She had a fondness for floral dresses with lace collars. She got married at some point during those years and became Mrs Mills. All her students went to her wedding and put lace horseshoes on her wrist as she and Mr Mills walked out of the church. I liked Miss McNamara because she sat me down one day and said she was going to start giving me harder maths to do because she thought I was very clever.

What’s an especially memorable field trip you took with a class in your very early years?
We were taken to Melbourne (about three hours on a bus) once. Quite the sensation we caused, a group of children between five and eleven marching everywhere in our crocodile lines of grey uniforms and navy ties. We went to Old Melbourne Gaol, which had posed mannequins in old prison uniforms in the cells. The uniforms were stamped with PD (for "Prison Department" or some such), only one of my fellow students was called Patrick Dooley and some wag suggested it was him. How we laughed. Later in the day we also went to Melbourne Zoo and I bought a bright orange souvenir mug.

What are some fads you remember from your elementary school days? Did you get into them?
There were only twenty-five children in my whole school, so we didn't really have fads. Not enough of us.

When I started secondary school in the City by the Sea, I was in the same class as a group of girls who had come from the City by the Sea's largest primary school. I remember one of them saying in Grade Six they had had a fad for tying the ends of a length of wool together and wearing it as a sash. I mean... we never went in for nonsense like that.

If your elementary school had food service, what’s a lunch you were especially fond of, and what’s a lunch you were especially not fond of?
Primary school. And food service would be... a canteen or cafeteria? We didn't run to that. We brought lunchboxes to school, which, given the era, was sandwiches and fruit and a biscuit/slice of cake. I was a picky eater who didn't like squishy sandwiches, so my lunchbox had deconstructed sandwiches that I could assemble myself or eat separately: a slice of bread and butter, some shredded meat, assorted salad vegetables.

Once a week, people could order a hot lunch (meat pie, pasty or sausage roll) from the town's store, which was about a hundred metres from the school. Parents would order and pay at the store during the morning, and Mr Bolden the shop keeper would deliver the orders to the school a lunch time. I was never allowed to do this.

A meme (feel free to ask if you'd like to play too):

Reply here and I'll give you 3 subjects I don't think you know or care much about. Then you talk about those subjects in your journal. It's interesting to see who knows what about what.

emma2403 gave me:


1) Fashion
Fair call that I don't know or care much about fashion. My fashion sense could be described as "what's in the shops when I need new clothes". As long as I look presentable... which is a step up from my teen years when I just wanted to look invisible.

I read somewhere that one's sense of style comes down to two choices: structured or drapey, and matte or shiny. I'm structured and matte. I think there's another choice that those two don't cover: colour. I tend to wear blacks and greys and jewel tones. Pastels and earth tones are not for me.

2) Painting (the art)
I like looking at paintings, the noun, so I care about it in that sense. It's true I don't know much about painting, the verb.

Once as a child, I was daubing away with my little children's watercolours, as a way to keep me quiet during a visit from my frail great-grandmother. "Would you like a cup of tea, Mum?" my grandmother asked her.

"Oh, no, just water will do," she said, and picked up my glass of murky blue brush water and downed the contents before anyone could stop her.

It didn't seem to do her any harm.

3) Japanese food
I had eggplant katsu with a pear and ginger slaw for dinner the other night. In all my job changes these last few years, I am pleased that I have always been within walking distance of the Japanese deli for days I decide to buy lunch. I used to take my lunch to work in a proper two-tier bento box until I discovered the hard way that it wasn't microwave safe. So I'm going to say that while I'm not an expert, I do care about Japanese food.

There's a thing going round to find your US Presidential candidate slogan: Your name + 2020 + the last text you sent. So vote

Daisy 2020
I can't find the Reckon password

A small novelty from this week: When I took Alistair out for his walk the other night, it was dark. I mean: obviously. But also: freakishly dark. It took me a while – longer than you’d think – to work out that the street light on the corner wasn't working. It wasn't working the next night either, or the night after that. So then I thought it should tell someone. But how?

It turns out the local council makes it surprisingly easy to report faulty street lights. Their website has a link to the energy company's page, where I had to enter my address and it showed me all the nearby street lights and I just had to click on the faulty one. The following day they sent me an email saying that street light 928452 had been fixed and thanking me for helping to keep the community safe, and last night the light was working. I feel so righteous.

It is Christmas Eve, and I have the day off, so what better thing to do than a meme?

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?
I've never had egg nog, so hot chocolate by default. Not really the weather for it, though.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Sadly, Santa no longer visits, but when I was little, Santa wrapped his presents and put them in a special Christmas sack at the end of my bed overnight, to be opened first thing in the morning. Presents from other people were wrapped and put under the tree to be opened after lunch.

3. Coloured or white lights?
This year I have a string of tiny, solar-powered coloured LED lights hung about the back verandah. They're not really for Christmas, though, just a summer decoration.

4. Do you hang a mistletoe?
No. I've never known anyone actually do that.

( And more like that )

Hello, f-list. This has been a stupidly busy couple of weeks. I've been like a mouse on a wheel. Lots of running, not getting anywhere.

Work continues. As in, it goes on, and also we are winding up the company and preparing to hand over the reins, and also we are starting a new company and preparing to pick up exactly where we left off, bigger and better than ever. We are supposed to hear late August or early September if our tender was successful.

My MBA subject this term is killing me. It's called Thinking and Decision-Making, but it should be called Reading, because that's all I'm doing. I'm a reasonably fast reader (not a speed reader, mind, just normally fast), and I can barely keep up. It's more reading than any subject since the commercial law subjects I had to do back in the day. I also had to hand in my first essay for this subject last Monday. Three thousand words on myself as a decision-maker. I wasn't happy with the final product. I would only give myself a Distinction for it, instead of the High Distinction I aim for, but I was just so over it. The weak point was the part where I was supposed to talk about organisational learning. I have a lot of thoughts about how that applies to my organisation, but I couldn't get them down properly. Anyway. It's done now.

I was supposed to have two weeks off in June, but then the tender was announced, so I cancelled that. My boss didn't exactly ask me to, but it was hinted at. Also, I wanted to be part of the tender. This thing has been out of our hands for so long, it was good to take back a bit of control. So it was my choice, and I can't complain. But I've been feeling run down, particularly over the last couple of weeks, dragging myself out of bed. I thought it was just down to needing a break, so it didn't occur to me that I might have been unwell. Not until last weekend when I found myself holed up with a tummy bug. Bleh.

So that has been the last two weeks. And now, finally, I have my two weeks leave. I think I'm going to sleep the first week. And maybe do a meme or two.

1. How long do you usually spend in the shower? Bath?
No time at all in the bath. I haven't had a bath in years. It uses too much water. Also, I don't want to sit in my own dirt. I've never understood how people can read in the bath without getting the pages wet. That's a skill I never mastered.

Showers are maybe ten minutes, tops. Shorter if I don't wash my hair, although I usually do.

( And more in the same vein )

This year has been less than ideal for various reasons, and continued that way today when I walked over to the shop to buy the paper. It was windy last night, so I'd barely started when I found that half the side fence had been blown down. I stacked the loose palings in the garden. So that's something I'll have to get fixed.

I kept going, and turned the corner to find a dead magpie on the road. Ugh. My street's magpie (and by magpie, I mean one of these) was a friendly bird. He lived in the big gum tree a few gardens over, from where he could keep an eye on his patch. He would swoop down to see me once or twice a day, landing on a garden chair and singing at me until I brought him out some food. I last saw him yesterday evening when he ate some oats out of my hand. I spent today hoping that the dead magpie was just some passing bird, but he hasn't been round today. So I'm really quite sad about that.

Day 1 - Ten random facts about yourself
Day 2 - Nine things you do everyday
Day 3 - Eight things that annoy you
Day 4 - Seven fears/phobias
Day 5 - Six songs that you’re addicted to
Day 6 - Five things you can’t live without
Day 7 - Four memories you won’t forget
Day 8 - Three words you can’t go a day without
Day 9 - Two things you wish you could do
Day 10 - One person you can trust

1. Regards
The closing on my work email. Plain on old regards are all you'll get from me. None of this 'warm regards' nonsense. Though warm regards are better than those people who sign off 'best'. That makes no sense at all.

2. Bit
I am trying to cut back on the number of times I describe something as 'a bit' whatever, when that doesn't really add anything to the sentence. Feel free to tell me if you notice me using it a bit too often.

3. Boy
Because Percy is a fine boy and a beautiful boy and such a handsome boy, and Chester Next Door, he's a good boy, oh yes he is.