Salt and corrosion

All week I have been receiving reminders about my booster shot tomorrow, both an email and a text, Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning. Then this afternoon, another text: my appointment has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. So that's what I've been doing this evening, booking a new appointment, and I'm sure you will be shocked and surprised to hear that it didn't go smoothly. This time I had a password and the verification emails worked, but the captcha wouldn't accept my answer, even though I entered it exactly as it was in the box. Three tries later, I finally got in; I reviewed the page with my personal details; I clicked on all the questions about allergies and which vaccines I've had and when; I entered my postcode and selected my nearest vaccination site; then... the page timed out with a message to try again later. So I went away and had dinner and tried again later and finally got an appointment for 3:30pm on Monday.

The only reaction I had to my first two shots was extreme tiredness; this time round, I'm exhausted before I even get there.

January

19. Do you like reality/competition TV shows? Why or why not? If so, which ones?
I don't enjoy people plotting and shouting and eating cockroaches, but I am very interested in talented people being nice to each other. So the Bake Off, the Sewing Bee, the pottery one. Masterchef sometimes.

Hello, f-list. I am unemployed! For two days. I finished work on Friday and I will start the new job on Monday. I've never done that before. I've always had at least a couple of weeks between jobs. I hope I remember to go to the right place. It's just across the road from where I've just finished, so that's not entirely out of the question. I must remember to turn right instead of left.

My last week was busy. My first boss from there, who left from burnout a few months after I started, rang from Canberra, which was nice. She's stopped being an accountant and is retraining as a tennis coach. Good for her. The finance and governance team, located in three different states, had a Skype lunch for me and sent me a gift voucher for a ticket agency, so that's my winter musical taken care of. The local staff took me out to dinner and give me an orchid and a glass jewellery box. And on Friday, the colleague who couldn't make the dinner popped in on her way to a meeting to give me a cake. Lovely people. I shall miss them. I will not miss the organisation, which is, let's say, interesting. I'll find out how they're managing without me in a couple of weeks, when I go to the leaving do for the other person made redundant.

In non-work news, my small-change piggy-bank was full, so last weekend I emptied its little belly and counted my coins: $144. I took them to the bank the following day and put it through the coin counter: $144.05. I said to the teller, "That's not right, there weren't any five cents in there, only gold coins [meaning one or two dollars]". She shrugged and said there must have been a five cent piece stuck in the machine. Lucky me, five cents profit. The thing is, the same thing happened last time I emptied the piggy bank; I remember writing about it here. I am inadvertently perpetrating the slowest bank fraud ever.

(Speaking of fraud: a tip, f-list. My tax office newsletter advised that we should write out the year in full on finance documents this year. That is, write 1/1/2020, not just 1/1/20. Putting 20 leaves it too open to be altered to another year for nefarious purposes.)

I'm not sure if it's because it's a new year, or because I've been preparing for the new job, or perhaps both, but I've been cleaning out. Inbox zero. Tidy desk. Wardrobe clearcut. The piggy-bank was a happy coincidence. I'm thinking I might have to unsubscribe to a few podcasts; I've been listening to them on my solo days in the office, but I suspect there will be more people around at the city council.

Music resolution meme stolen from lady_bird

Get out your iPod (or something from the 2010s/2020s) and prepare to be amazed by the power of music to predict what you will, or should, do in the new year. Shuffle your playlist and set your controls for random play. Let it play a new, randomly selected song for each question and write down the title as your answer. Don't pick and choose — take the first song it gives you!

1. So, how would you best describe 2019?
"Like A Prayer" - Lavender Diamond

( And more in the same vein )

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.

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? )

Here is a thing I never knew existed: a pasta tap. As in, a tap right above the stove top for ease of filling your saucepan. I can't say I'm tempted by this idea. It looks cluttered. And I think I can manage to carry my saucepan of water the single metre between my sink and my stove top.

Do you remember last year Sydney had a competition to name a ferry and it ended up being called Ferry McFerryface? Well, it turns out Ferry McFerryface wasn't the winner. It wasn't even on the shortlist. It's all a bit confusing, because there seem to be multiple lists and different numbers of votes, but as far as I can tell, the winner was, sigh, Boaty McBoatface, but since that was what the English one was meant to be, they picked Ferry McFerryface as being in a similar vein. Only now all this has come out, they've renamed it after children's author and illustrator, May Gibbs.

But! Late breaking news! When I was looking for the links to the story I read this morning, I came across an update saying that May Gibbs may have been ineligible as a name under the competition rules, because the name was meant to be science or environment-related (which doesn't explain how Ferry McFerryface got through). So there may be more to come. (There is also an actual, living person, Ian Kiernan, who was apparently told last year that the ferry would be named after him, and he has done nothing but complain ever since it wasn't. I mean, I get that he was excited to have it named after him, but he could do with being a bit more chill about it.)

In other news, my new driver's licence arrived today, resplendent with my face sans glasses. It was gratifying to discover that I am no more hideous without them than I am with them. No less hideous either, but no more, so that was nice. Only I look... do I look... do I seem a bit... "You look ginger," said my mother. "How did they turn your hair red?" What magic has the VicRoads camera wrought? At least it's my hair this time, not tomato bright cheeks like it normally is.

Today I made gingerbread brownies. I am so festive.

There is a big jewellery store on the corner of the City by the Sea's main street, part of a statewide chain. This time last year, they were having a massive sale prior to renovating the shop in January. I bought an alarm clock for a song. After a big re-opening in February, the chain announced a few weeks ago that it's closing. Not just the City by the Sea's store; all of them. What a waste of a glossy new fit out. Anyway, this year they're having a massive sale prior to closing down, so I popped in as I was passing. Gosh, it was sad. Empty. I was talking to one of the shop assistants, who said they were meant to stay open till Boxing Day, but she thought they'd be cleaned out weeks before then.

My mother keeps the deed of her house at the bank, but she has decided to get it out and put it with her will at her solicitor's office. I browsed in the bookshop next door while she went in to get it, and she came in, outraged. "Three hundred and eighty-five dollars!" was her greeting. That's how much it cost to get stuff out of the bank's vault. That's... exorbitant.

What did I do this week apart from coughing, sleeping, and taking part in lengthy discussions about how high the shelf in the shower should be? I voted. Woo. We are having a national postal survey on whether we support same-sex marriage. Our government has tied itself in knots on the matter. There's nothing stopping them from having a vote and sorting it out themselves, but due to various cunning machinations they have committed themselves to this survey first. Not a referendum or plebiscite conducted by the Electoral Commission, you understand; the outcome of that would be binding. No, this is a survey, run by the Bureau of Statistics. Just to gauge our mood. And once the results are in, there's no guarantee that parliament will vote anyway, or that they will vote the same way as the survey. So it could all be a waste of $122 million. Nonetheless, I ticked the Yes box and sent it back. Civic duty done.


Today we have been collecting paint samples and looking at door handles for the bathroom. Only another week to go.

I should have written this entry last Tuesday to use this title on Melbourne Cup day. Ah well.

Today I thought it would be fun to do some random reviews throughout the day. I found a website that generated three random times for me, and this is what I was up to at the appointed hour:

10:45 – Reading Fresh magazine after unpacking the groceries – ★ ★ ★
( And it doesn't get any more exciting than that )

That was fun, wasn't it? Perhaps I could do that all week.

Knitting update: I unknitted the row I had to unknit and threaded a lifeline through it in case I had to do it again, and as that's all I did last week it doesn't seem worth photographing it. I had it resting on my knees during the unknitting and threading and I must say it's very warm. If the cardigan doesn't work out it can be an oddly shaped blanket.

Finally, by popular demand (two), I have set up a Goodreads account as todayiamadaisy (of course). Do friend me (or whatever their term for it is) if you'd like. (For new friends here, I should say I am also todayiamadaisy on Pinterest, if you'd care to follow my quest to find the world's worst shoes. Just when I think I've captured them all, another one shows up.)

A sentence from the news: He has been released and is expected to be charged on summons with assault, weapons, public order and disguise-related offences. I did not know there were such things as disguise-related offences. (He was dressed as a clown.)

I was all set to have a bit of a grizzle about our local council elections, which are done by postal ballot. If you don’t get the papers by Wednesday, you’re supposed to go and pick up a set yourself. And today is Tuesday and my papers haven’t arrived and I’m going to have to find out where to go and then I’m going to have to go there and it will be so much work… and then they were in today’s mail, so I filled in the form and it’s ready to post back tomorrow. Phew, hey?

I now only have seven days to work. It's starting to be a bit real now. What I am going to do? Will I starve? Will I have to sell my teeth? Will I have to live on the streets with Alistair? Last week I was thinking, you know, perhaps this job isn't so bad, it is all I have known for eleven years, maybe I am making a huge mistake. And then I spent three hours talking to our help desk trying to get the time changed (to daylight saving time) on my desk phone, and I thought, actually, yes, I'm over this. Also, I didn't get the time changed because it can't be done. Apparently no-one has ever made this outrageous and unreasonable demand before. Which is nonsense, obviously.

Weekly knitting photo from Sunday: ( Second sleeve finished )

I have a cold. Obviously this means I am the sickest person in the world.

On Thursday, I noticed that I had received a text message earlier in the week allegedly from my bank, giving a code to approve an online transaction of 12 million Indonesian rupiahs. Spam, obviously, so I deleted it. On Friday evening I checked my online banking and noticed that my credit card balance was unexpectedly high. There was a payment to Garuda Airlines for $1,200. That's about 12 million rupiah. Hmmm. So I rang the bank and complained, and the man said, "Oh, no, we would never do a transfer like that without you entering the code. That must have been a different attempt." Right. So he's cancelled my card and issued a new one.

Knitting! ( Did I cast on last night just to avoid the shame of completely missing another week? )