Salt and corrosion

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.

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.

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.



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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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! )

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.

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.