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My week of leave is going well. We made a list of jobs that need doing and are ticking them off. Took some old electronics to the e-waste station. Came back to find two things I'd missed. Built a wooden border around a flower bed. Went through my wardrobe and threw out some old work pants and shoes. Took a box of stuff to charity. My mother rang the food bank to ask if they took fresh vegetables (they do). Took fifteen zucchini and fifty tiny tomatoes to the food bank, and that's still not the end of the zucchini and tomatoes. Read my way through a handful of my the books I bought last week. Made a rhubarb and custard cake.

Still to come: going out for lunch Thursday and Friday, getting a new battery for the clock, weeding and mulching the front garden.

March questions

1. If you built a themed hotel, what would the theme be, and what would the rooms look like?
I wouldn't, is the short answer to that, because I am not cut out for life as a hotelier.

But to engage with the question: clouds. Wouldn't it be nice to sleep in a cloud? Stay in the Cumulus room, bright blue with puffy white furniture. Or the Nimbostratus room, where everything is misty grey. Or the Cumulonimbus room, painted purple with weird yellow lights.

2. What was one of the most interesting concerts you've been to? What was interesting about it?
How about a concert I've been in? One year my clarinet teacher had me join a collaboration between the local orchestra and choir for a performance of Handel's Messiah. And it was fine, rehearsals went well, the crowd filed in for the Easter performance... until halfway through one of the pieces the choir went flat. They just took a turn downwards and couldn't get it back. So the conductor stopped us mid-piece and made us start again, and you could hear the ripple of confusion through the audience. So that was some unexpected excitement. ("It woke me up," complained my mother, who was in the audience.)

3. What did you Google last (or Bing, or Duck-Duck-Go, or otherwise search for online)?
I just did an image search for photos of old australian motel breakfast hatches. I was thinking of working them into my theme hotel.

4. What odd smell do you really like?
(I should remind the reader that, to an Australian, a thong is a rubber flip-flop. A thing for your feet.)

I enjoy the thong aisle of the supermarket. All that fresh rubber.
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I am now on a week of leave. So far I have: been back to the neighbourhood second-hand book shop that is closing down and bought some more Chalet School and Miss Silver novels; driven past a car accident with flashing police lights everywhere; been to the lakeside farmers' market and witnessed a fight between two swans right in the middle of the market; seen a two-tailed lizard running along a fence; tidied my handbag and found a Nestlé Crunch bar I didn't know I had. Two-and-a-half days of non-stop action and unexpected thrills.

The car accident was the second time this week I have seen the Crime Scene Van in action (that's painted on the side of it). I walk to work past a building site on the TAFE campus, and the other morning the Crime Scene Van was parked nearby and there were two people in those pale blue hooded coveralls and two men in high-vis vests and hard hats looking at something down the side of the building.

(It occurs to me I should clarify when I say "swans" I mean black swans, so you can more accurately picture the fight at the market.)

February questions

25. What is the least inspiring/interesting meal you've eaten?
I'm sure as a student, I had plain buttered noodles as a whole meal at some stage. Once in a restaurant, I ordered a side salad and received a bowl of lettuce with two slices of tomato hidden in it. Once when I was little, my grandfather and I were alone for dinner, and he was so excited to make sausages the way he liked them, instead of the way my grandmother cooked them for him, and the way he like them was boiled. Boiled pink flesh with grey skin flaking off, they remain among the least appetising things I have ever seen. He hoed in with Rosella Sweet Mustard Pickles on top. I loved my grandfather dearly, but he had terrible taste in sausages.

Oh, and cakes! Sometimes in a café you might see a lovely cake, beautifully decorated, but it turns out to taste underwhelming. I'm looking at you, overly sticky and sweet orange and almond cake at Club Warrnambool. There are few things more dispiriting than a disappointing cake.

26. What really needs to be modernized?
A good few of Australia's politicians, media and business class need to modernise their ideas. We're currently in a bout of nonsense about some senior female politicians apparently being "mean girls".

27. "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger!" Do you believe hardship make a person stronger? If so, under what conditions and at what point is it too much hardship? If not, what makes a person stronger?
No. What doesn't kill you physically is likely to get you hospitalised or leave you quite unwell for a long time, and there's no reason mental or emotional stress would be any different.

I think a person's reaction to hardship depends so much on context: their personality, their circumstances, what the hardship is, and so many other factors. And what is a strong reaction - persevering, overcoming, trying something else, or walking away?

28. What's invisible, but you wish people could actually see it?
After two years of Covid, it would be nice if people who had it grew, I don't know, bright green freckles or something. Not permanently. And not sore like pox. Just temporary, painless, surface-only markings during the contagious period.
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I had a half-formed plan to write a daily entry in January, then proceeded to do nothing of interest for the first day of it. So I will return to the year-end meme that I didn't do. One of the questions was about the best thing I bought in 2021. That's one I can answer: having spent so long in lockdown, we bought small things to fix annoying problems around the home. E.g. the dish brush used to sit on a tray under the sink, dripping on the plug; I bought a little ceramic pot for it to sit in. An attractive glass bottle with a non-drip spout for olive oil. A new toilet brush that has secret panel to keep a bottle of toilet cleaner in. Slip covers for the steak knives that live loose in the cutlery drawer.

And the best of the things: these clips for food bags. They were so good, I bought a second packet of them, and all twenty-four of them are all in use pretty much all the time.
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I started doing that year-end meme that comes around every year, but I don't have interesting answers to any of the questions. So here's a sort of year-end review based on the unused comments in my notebook that I meant to turn into LJ entries but could never find a voice for.

ant

Read more... )

Also, we've had a lot of ants.
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Late-breaking news on Friday, as all of Victoria went into a snap Stage 4 lockdown for five days, Saturday to Wednesday. I had to go to the supermarket on Friday afternoon and there were already signs up about limited purchases of certain items: toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitiser. The usual suspects. But there wasn't panic buying. Everyone probably has enough toilet paper in storage from last time.

Before that it was an odd sort of week, as I'd had to go into the office a few times. I'd been thinking that everyone was getting slightly blasé about it all - there used to be bottles of hand sanitiser on every desk and spare surface, for example, which have all disappeared now. Perhaps this snap lockdown will kick everything back into action. I'm supposed to be back there on Tuesday for a two hour meeting about fringe benefits tax, but I don't think that will come under the definition of "essential work" to meet in person. I hope not, at any rate.

At home, there was (extremely) minor excitement on two fronts. First, I bought a label maker and made tiny labels for the top of all my spice jars, so now when I open the spice drawer I can read the top of the lid without having to lift them up. What a time saver. While at the stationery shop, I found mailing labels, just regular sheets of Avery labels, but on clear frosted paper instead of white. So I bought some of that too, and made slightly fancy labels for all the plain jars in the pantry.

Second excitement: the first of my Christmas subscription cheese boxes arrived. Camembert, chèvre rolled in ash, a semi-hard cow's milk cheese with wildflowers pressed into it, and manchego-style cheese aged in wine. I've tried the first two so far, and they've both been good.

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Last year, for a New Year's resolution, I did two of the challenges from The Conqueror (it was a New Year two-for-the-price-of-one special), where you log your exercise as a distance and get virtual postcards of your trip and an actual medal at the end. Last year I did the New Zealand Alps to Ocean and the US Grand Canyon distances. I signed up again this year, same deal. I'm currently halfway up Mount Fuji. Not sure what the second one will be yet. Maybe the set your own distance one and make it long enough for the rest of the year. I suspect that will be the only way I travel anywhere for the foreseeable future.

No new bright flowers this week. Instead, a photo of the dangers that lurk when picking vegetables: someone playing Tiger in the Grass among the bean plants.

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I have been a little flat these last few weeks. Stage 3 lockdown again (plus masks this time) + audit + the bleak midwinter (it snowed within 100km of the City by the Sea the other day!). So I've made an effort this week to do something fun, or at least constructive and not work-related, every day.

Sunday
The very lovely [livejournal.com profile] emma2403 sent me a carton of sirop de Liège, which I used to make Belgian meatballs. And it was good. It has since proven to also be good with dry biscuits and cheese, and I will next try it on pancakes.

The rest of the week )
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I have had a productive couple of days. I haven't finished my Christmas cards or reconciled my credit card, but I have done a lot else: put up fairy lights in the back garden, wrote and uploaded my job application, went to two different Christmas markets, and made some very nice chocolate biscuits.

I am currently battling with myself on two different fronts. One: Do I want to sign up for a six-month cable knitting challenge? Yes. Would I do it? Probably not. Would I then resent the project for distracting me from other things I want to do? Most definitely. So... leaning towards no for that one.

Two: My annual calendar quandary. I may have something of a calendar problem. At home I have a little calendar on a tiny easel next to my computer. At work I have a year planner on the wall behind me and a small calendar on my pinboard. I already have these, because I am organised and I love calendars. Only I am so organised I have already annotated and colour-coded the small calendar with pay days, due dates and other days of importance to my work, obviously anticipating I would have the same job all year long. O rash, foolish me. So now I am considering buying another calendar, in order to have a fresh start once I finish using the first one at the end of January. Do I need it, or am I just indulging my calendar habit?

Thank goodness I hadn't started marking up my wall planner too.
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So much for doing a daily entry. I missed Friday because dark clouds descended into a full on fit of the glooms. I think it has been looming all week, or at least since getting the redundancy meeting request on Tuesday. What is the point? would have been the general tenor of anything I wrote yesterday, what is the actual point?

But I bounced back this morning when I saw that the City by the Sea's council is in need of an accountant in the new year. When I will be free! So that job has my name on it, obviously, even if the council doesn't know it yet. Lucky old them, hey.

I am looking forward to tomorrow, when (a) I can start my Body Shop Advent calendar and (b) I am going to see Knives Out.
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A half-day of work today, so you'd think I could do something interesting with my afternoon off. I bought some new oven gloves. And — wait for it — I resubscribed to my tax newsletter. Oh, the fun never stops.
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There is an independent supermarket near my office, which is the only place in the City by the Sea that sells Fancy Feast Chicken Feast Classic Paté (and only then in a box of twelve). That absurdly named cat food is His Lordship's current favourite, so I have to go there every twelve days to stock up. That's what I was doing a few weeks ago when I passed by their Oddities For Less Than Five Dollars Shelf. It's full of stuff like solar-powered nodding unicorns and paint-it-yourself dog food bowls and twenty-peg sock hangers a bit like this. I bought one of the sock hangers and it's amazing. I mean, for a given level of amazing. But: ten pairs of socks not taking up space and pegs on the line!
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What has happened this week?

A burst of winter, so cold I had to make a chocolate self-saucing pudding to warm me up.

A win, finally, for my quiz team, made possible because they've made the music round easier (I would now class the music as "Songs I Know" rather than "Songs by the Jesus and Mary Chain").

News of a database failure at Old Work and an absolutely terrible decision in how to respond to it, which I shouldn't find upsetting now, but I do.

A visit to the library, wherein I discovered that they have self-serve checkouts now.

A tsunami of self-doubt.

What does next week have in store?

New shutters for the bedroom windows, fingers crossed. I'm sick of getting the step-ladder to tie up the blankets every morning.

My mother's birthday, for which I am taking her out to lunch and making a cake (type still to be decided).

And that's about it.
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Update 1a
My mother went out yesterday and when she came back she had her house deed with her. The woman at the bank called her while she was out so she went straight in to get it. It turned up in the bank's post yesterday, even though the bank's computer system still shows the request as being processed. Whoever sent it also returned the fee via a bank cheque. So that's all turned out well.

Update 1b
While filling in the final paperwork, the woman at the bank noted that my mother's surname, with its remarkable lack of H where people think there should be one, is the same as her mother's. My mother's judicious questioning revealed that her grandfather and the bank woman's great-great-grandfather were brothers (brothers who emigrated to Australia, in fact, dooming their pale children to lifetimes of skin cancer and having their name misspelt). So my mother and the bank woman are, what, second cousins twice removed? Something like that. So that's a thing that happened.

Update 2
Another week has gone by without hearing from the recruiter, so I assume that's a no. I'm okay with that. I thought the interview went really well, so there's nothing I'm kicking myself for saying/not saying. It's their loss, because I'd have been great at that job. (I do think it's rude not to get in touch with the unsuccessful interviewees.) So it's back to looking.

Update 3
Not really an update, but to keep the format I'll pass it off as one, as I mentioned my quiz team a few weeks ago. This week we came third. No prize for that. But there is a round each week where one player from each team has to go to the front of the bar and play a true/false game, in which the guy reads out a statement and the players all choose true (by putting their hands on their heads) or false (by putting their hands on their tails) and those who get it wrong have to go back to their tables, and so on until there's a winner. The winner gets points for their team, plus a jug of whatever drink they want, plus they get to do a Jaegerbomb* at the bar with the host. All of that is so far out of my comfort zone it's invisible. I've played it once before and happily lost in round three.

This week I thought I should show willing and volunteered to do it again. I made it past round three. Past round four. Five. Six. Seven. Past round eight and suddenly it was just me and a very tall and bearded young man left standing. When there are only two players left, they can't both pick the same answer. If they do pick the same answer, the first one to pick it gets to keep that answer, while the other player has to have the opposite.

"Stand closer together," said the host, as we had started at the far ends of the line. We shuffled to the centre of the bar and shook hands.

"Ready? Okay, the final statement is: the letter C represents carbon on the periodic table." My opponent and I both slammed our hands on our heads for true.

Who won? )
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What I would really like to do is start an entry with "yay, I got the job" (unlikely) or "boo, I didn't get the job" (more likely), but I haven't heard yet. The job search was coordinated by a human resources consultant, so I would expect that I'd actually hear if it was a no, not just leave me hanging. I do think the longer it goes the more likely it is to be no. At my once-and-current work, we ring successful applicants and email unsuccessful ones, and I am assuming something similar here, so I am getting a bit twitchy when I hear the phone ring or get an email notification.

Today we pulled down the bedroom curtains. The whole thing: curtains, lace, rods. We put putty in the holes and sanded the frames. Tomorrow: we paint the frame. And then we paint it again the next day. And then we'll be ready for the plantation shutters that are due next week. Blankets at the windows until then. Classy.

Oh, I saw an accident today! Not a bad one. I had parked in an angle park down the street and was getting some stuff out of the boot. A woman had stopped her car in the street, waiting for the car next to me to pull out of the park so she could go in. A man in a white van backed out on the other side of the road, right across the line of traffic and into the side of the woman's car, and then drove off. I wrote down the van's registration number on the back of a receipt (the only paper I could find), while the woman pulled in to the park she was waiting for. There was only minor damage to her car, and she was fine, but she was going to go round to the police station. So that was a bit of excitement.

Later I said hello to Brian Next Door while he was poking about in his front garden. He said, "Did you know the student house up the road was up for sale?" I did not. I knew which house he meant: it's an old house on the next block to ours, which has been let out to students for as long as anyone can remember. It's not as old as my house, which is the original house on the street, but it is the only other one on the street made of conite (stucco), so it's older than all the others, which are mid-century brick. So: one hundred years, or thereabouts.

Brian always wants to buy other houses on our street, but he never does. I asked if he bought this one, and he said, "Nah, Coolahan did." Coolahan lives in the same block as the student house. Brian said, "He wants to knock the house down and build a new one, so he went to the council to get permission, and do you know what they said?" No, I do not know. "They told him there's no house on that block. Never has been." We turned and looked at the house that isn't there, clearly there. As it has been for the last hundred years. "So," said Brian, "has anyone been paying rates on it?"

Say someone you know had a bag of oranges. What would you suggest she do with them? (Note: She has already made an orange cake, and very nice it was too.)
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This week, I bought a new doormat. My thrilling life. I went to Clark Rubber ("Everything pools, foam and rubber!"). It's an odd sort of shop, that. It's a big, concrete-floored space, with metal shelves full of practical things like caravan mattresses and pool hoses. Utilitarian rather than decorative. But they also sell pool toys, so the first thing you see when you go in is a giant inflatable peacock. As in, already inflated, to greet you at the door. So that's a bit of fun. (The giant gold swan on that same page was also lurking about at the end of an aisle, although not the giant rainbow unicorn, sadly.)

This is back to keep me honest: Weekly knitting update )
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Weekly update: I bought a new kettle. It's a thrill a minute life I lead, let me tell you.

Obviously you will be hanging out to know how Spongebob Quizpants went this week. 9 Downing Street )

Short version: We came third. Again.

Weekly knitting update: Off the needles! )
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Weekly knitting update: None. I've been writing an essay this week.

Said essay, oh. My subject this term is Strategic Project Management, and of all the subjects I've done for this MBA, this is the one that is hitting home. The set up of the new company last year was really a succession of different projects, and everything I read I find something else we did wrong. But things were so chaotic last year I don't think we could have done any better. Oh well. Water under the bridge now.

Other than that, it's been a busy week. We had the heaters cleaned for winter. (I said busy, not exciting.) Also, there is action on the tree front, as the fourth tree-trimmer my mother called came round to do a quote. He (a) called back when he got her message and (b) came round for the quote when he said he would, so it seems hopeful that he will be back as promised in two weeks to actually trim the trees. While I was meeting with the tree man, my mother was off signing documents to do with John's will. I haven't mentioned the will much, but eighteen months after he died, the will is still not finalised. Not from any controversy; just the solicitors dragging their feet.

On Tuesday my mother said, "Do you remember if I was wearing my good reading glasses when you left this morning?" Actually, I had noticed her glasses. She had them folded into the neck of her cardigan, which was unusual. So unusual she lost them. Anyway, knowing that she'd had her glasses when I left at ten, she retraced her steps after that. No glasses. I retraced her steps. No glasses. Nowhere. No glasses to be found. On Thursday, I dug over the vegetable patch and covered it with sugar cane straw. On Friday morning, my mother went and picked out some new reading glasses. On Friday afternoon, I found the old glasses on top of the vegetable patch. Dry, while the ground was wet. So that's very strange. Maybe a bird picked them up and they fell out of the tree?

One of my old work colleagues, Merryn, emailed me about a personal thing she's doing. I had to think about the response, so I left it while I went out to do the shopping, where, wouldn't you know it, I saw Merryn walking down the street towards where I know she parks her car. I swerved into the nearest park, jumped out of my car, and (not stopping to put money in the meter, tsk), ran half a block. I knocked on her window just as she started the ignition and she shrieked, so we spent half a minute laughing at each other: me at her for how she jumped, and her at me because I had to lean against the car, puffing. I am no sprinter.

Halfway through typing this, Alistair brought in a live mouse, let it go, then went out again. Thanks, cat. His first ever mouse though.
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How is it the end of Friday already? My week off went much too fast.

I haven't frittered away my holiday just mooching around the house. I went to Melbourne to see Matilda. That's the musical, not the giant, winking kangaroo. Matilda the musical is great fun, and I highly recommend it, should you find yourself with a chance to obtain tickets to a performance of it.

I also went out to lunch one day, and bought a new doormat. It's all go here, let me tell you.

Australia still does not have a result from its election. It looks likely that the government will be returned, but until then we are a lawless rabble. Or we just dispense with elections and take today's Cartland title as a suggestion.
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This week I will try to kickstart posting again by doing a daily post. What did I do today?

I started by ignoring Alistair when he came in mewing for breakfast at 6:15. You can set your watch by him. Only not this morning, because the clocks went back. So he was mewing an hour earlier than he thought, and I wasn't getting up to feed him at 5:15.

At a more reasonable hour, my mother and I went for a walk on the beach path. Lots of joggers this morning. A few horses on the beach. A few of the regulars we see every weekend: Puffy Orange Parka Man and Fit Old Lady With Elderly Dog. A flock of ibis and one egret on the river.

I changed my sheets. I cut my fingernails. The finger that was sore earlier in the year is now better; the fingernail is still discoloured from the silver nitrate, but the weak point has nearly grown out. I went to the supermarket. They are... building something? Not sure what. The back carpark is a construction site, and I had to park in the side carpark instead. I went to Bunnings (hardware store) on the way home and bought a couple of bags of mushroom compost. I also bought some batteries for the smoke detector (bearing in mind the catchy slogan "Change Your Clocks, Change Your Smoke Detector Batteries"), but when I got home I found that we already had some and my mother had changed them while I was gone.

After lunch, I put the mushroom compost and some lime in one of the vegetable beds, and planted out two heads of garlic. I got the tulip bulbs out of the cupboard and put them in the vegetable crisper. Last year I put some daffodils in at the bay tree's barrel; this year Alistair has taken to sleeping there, so my mother dug the daffodils out last week, and today I planted them in the garden.

There is a branch of the magnolia tree right at eye level, which has some funny little balls hanging from it. Google tells me they are the egg sacs of a bird dropping spider, which is a spider that resembles a bird dropping.

Last winter I bought a jigsaw to do during the long, cold nights. Life went awry, and that jigsaw did not get finished. I'm only just doing it now. It may be done by this winter. I did some work on the jigsaw while listening to podcasts (Futility Closet and There's No Such Thing As A Fish). I chopped vegetables for dinner and prepared my bag for work tomorrow. After dinner, I watched "Call The Midwife" with my mother. She likes to diagnose the problem before the television midwives. Then I read for a while, and now I'm doing this before bed.

That was Sunday.
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Happy new year, f-list.

I saw the new year in very quietly. At midnight I went out and looked down the hill and watched the City by the Sea's fireworks. It was such a clear night, I could see over to Port Fairy round the other side of the bay. They had fireworks too, so from where I stood, I could see the City by the Sea's fireworks over the beach, with Port Fairy's as tiny, distant echoes underneath.

Today I announced that I was going out to buy milk, and that somehow led to accompanying my mother to a furniture store to try out new sofas. Not to buy, you understand. Just to sit on. Just for kicks. We know how to have fun.
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I bought a new sticky tape dispenser the other day. I know, my thrilling life. My old tape dispenser lost its bite, so to speak, as it was getting harder and harder to cut tape. So I bought a new one. I always think they look like snails, but this one is shaped like a green elephant. I didn't realise until I opened it at home that it's actually a double tape dispenser. One side is a manual dispenser; you put your finger in the hole in the trunk to pull it forward, and that pulls the tape out. The other side is an automatic dispenser; you push the lever back to pump the tape out, then pull the lever forward to cut it. So I'm all sorted for sticky tape for, ooh, the next ten years, and that's the most exciting thing that's happened to me all week.

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