Salt and corrosion

Last Saturday the city council ran a home detox day, where you could drop off all the stuff you're not meant to put in the normal rubbish like cleaning products and paint and such. I put my little collection of things in a box in the boot of my car and went to the saleyards. Er... a quick search reveals that the most prominent appearances of the word 'saleyards' on the internet are from Australia or New Zealand, so perhaps I should say I went to the livestock saleyards (what do the rest of you call the place where livestock is bought and sold?). There were no livestock sales on, obviously. It's just a big, empty space most of the time. Anyway, I didn't really know what to expect or how long it would take. I was imagining handing my box over and having someone go through it while frowning at my extravagance of having three different types of half-empty carpet cleaner. It wasn't like that at all. It turned out to be a sort of drive-through operation, where you stayed in your car until you reached the disposal area, then you popped the boot and the workers took your stuff away. It only took about five minutes. It was almost disappointing how easy it was.

Sunday, my Uncle B picked up my mother and I and we went to our aunt's (well, their aunt, my great-aunt) ninetieth birthday party. So that was nice. The birthday girl's name is Jean, but she is called Jinny by everybody and Jinny Grizzlebritches by the family. I don't know why, because she is a delightful lady who neither grizzles nor wears britches, but there you go. Anyway, she is alert and spry and says she fully intends to make us all gather in another ten years for her hundredth. So that's good. There was a general consensus that it was nice to see all the family and particularly nice that it wasn't at a funeral.

One of Jinny's daughters is visiting from Queensland at the moment. She lost everything but her cat and her car in the floods earlier this year. She is in good spirits. She said, 'It's only things, and I've still got money in the bank. The worst part is that I have to deal with Centrelink.' (Centrelink being our social security department.) She said to get emergency relief funding she had to fill out a form listing all her immediate cash expenses, which was fine until she put a zero in the rent section. She had a call from Centrelink saying, 'Your house is unliveable so where are you living? Why aren't you paying rent?' and she explained that she was staying with her daughter and son-in-law and they weren't charging her rent. Then she had three more calls with the same question over the next two weeks. The last man she spoke to said, 'We just want to make sure you know you're eligible for rent assistance if you need it,' which they hadn't mentioned to that point. Oh, Centrelink. So helpful, and yet so not. She is also eligible for special assistance from Telstra, her phone company. Because she doesn't have a landline at the moment, not having a house to have a landline in, Telstra is forwarding all her landline calls to her mobile at no extra charge. Which she thought was nice of them until she got her phone bill, which she described as being 'so high I couldn't jump over it'. It included a two-minute phone call from her brother for which she was charged $55, which seems... exhorbitant.

What else? Uncle B was telling us that he had been to a jazz festival, including one show in which the pianist asked the audience to shout out song titles for him to riff on in a hideous, plinky jazz fashion (or so I imagine). Uncle B was particularly scathing that someone called for 'Chopsticks'. I am just surprised that anyone would want to listen to it for fun.

Yesterday and today, there have been white butterflies and dragonflies everywhere. Clouds of them. But would they stay still so I could photograph them? No.

My daily inspirational email from the universe continues to be slightly depressing. The other day it told me that we are all along the person we have always dreamed of becoming. I find that disheartening rather than uplifting, thanks all the same, universe.

Finally, in today's staff meeting I drew a flower on my agenda. ( I was quite pleased with it. )

There was a man in the post office this morning, a big, leathery, builder type in work shorts and a checked shirt, and he boomed to the lady behind the counter, "I've got to send this to my grand-daughter, love!" and he pulled a tiny, pink, fairy dress out of a shopping bag. So that was cute. And then another man came in wanting to post a chainsaw (in a protective case), but by that time I'd been served so I didn't get to see if he was allowed to or not.

Someone forwarded me one of those "THIS IS INCREDIBLE YOU'LL BE AMAZED!!!!!" emails the other day, which I don't normally encourage. This one, though, actually was kind of interesting: it was full of optical illusions. One in particular caught my attention:



The point of it is that square A and square B are really the same colour. Normally once I hear the explanation of an optical illusion, I can see it, but this time, while I understand it in theory, I've been looking and looking and looking at it and I can't get it. Even now I've seen the little animation on this page, my brain just won't accept it.

( And a game! )

I'm trying to write an entry each day this November, and I was pottering about this morning wondering what I could write about today when - serendipity! - John came in with a box of paper. He works at the performing arts centre and does various bits and bobs for the local theatre companies, and, being a thrifty fellow, keeps old scripts and gives them to me to use as scrap paper for printing. Today's box of paper contains three incomplete photocopies of the script for a musical called My Favourite Year and a sheaf of pages of tongue twisters, obviously meant to be actors' warm-ups. Excellent! Let's limber up now, shall we?

We'll start with the oddly difficult two-word twisters like pacific lithographs and knapsack straps.

Getting slightly harder: The Leith police dismisseth us.

Getting slightly more disturbing: Freshly fried fresh flesh.

This one, to mix a metaphor, brought my tongue to its knees: The seething seas ceaseth and twiceth the seething seas sufficeth us. I seem to have a problem with sibilants; the syllables somehow switch themselves around in my mouth. I remember from my radio-presenting days that I could talk my way through any number of long and difficult words only to run into trouble when I got to an item about the Anti-Cancer Council (or the Anti-Cancil Councer, as my listeners know it).

But I think my favorite tongue twister on the list (and one that poses me no problems, except in typing it) is the sad tale of the two-toed tree toad:

A tree toad loved a she-toad
Who lived up in a tree.
He was a two-toed tree toad
But a three-toed toad was she.
The two-toed tree toad tried to win
The three-toed she-toad's heart,
For the two-toed tree toad loved the ground
That the three-toed tree toad trod.
But the two-toed tree toad tried in vain,
He couldn't please her whim.
From her tree toad bower
With her three-toed power
The she-toad vetoed him.

Well, that loosened everything up.

On Monday, my jury service was postponed till Thursday; now it's been cancelled altogether. I'm... a bit disappointed, I think. The only other time I've actually had to turn up for jury service was in the old court house; I was looking forward to seeing the new building.

I had a something of a hissy-fit with Quicken personal accounting software yesterday, and not the for the first time. Actually, it's not so much the software, which is fine, but the organisation behind it. Too long and pointless to explain, really, except to say that I was so cross with them that I found some open source software to do the same job and joyfully uninstalled Quicken. So hello, Grisbi, and take that, you money-grubbing Quicken vultures!

What else? I've had to read studies on television use lately, and came across this gem from 1958. Back then, television was not available in all parts of the United Kingdom, so the researchers were able to compare the leisure activities of those people who had access to television to the leisure activities of those who didn't to see which activities were most displaced by television. Some things, such as "teenage social activities and sports" were hardly affected at all; some that had "functional similarity" to television, like going to the cinema or reading comics, declined; but the big losers? Apparently, "the bulk of the time found for television seems to be drawn from essentially time-wasting activities (like watching raindrops run down a window pane)". Now, I'll admit to doing that once or twice, but not so regularly that I would class it as a leisure activity. Ah, different times.

The first exam went well. Because I'm so far from Monash University, I get to sit my exams right here in the City by the Sea at the local TAFE College (that stands for Technical And Further Education - it's for practical qualifications like apprenticeships). Normally there's only me and perhaps one or two other Monash students, tucked away in a tiny back room, scribbling away at our papers. Today the lady said to me, "You're going to have a lot of company this time", and led me to the main lecture theatre where about fifty youthful plumbing apprentices were sitting a technical drawing exam in advanced roofing. "They started an hour ago," explained the lady, "so you'll have to slip in quietly from the back door. One of them was so nervous when I checked his ID his hands were shaking." Poor kid.

My desk was obvious - nearest the back door and empty apart from a paper on Australia's Cultural and Communications Policy - so I squeezed in, making as little noise as I could. The boy in the next desk looked up and whispered, "Hello, Alicia", and grinned at me before going back to his work. This confused me; I don't know any young potential plumbers. Then I looked at the whiteboard at the front of the room and all became clear. The invigilator had written two sets of instructions about time allowed and keeping quiet and so on, one headed "ADVANCED ROOFING" and the other headed "ALICIA". Didn't I feel special?

I've recently been pointed in the direction of Sarsaparilla, a multi-person Australian-based blog on arts & culture issues, and most interesting it is. A link there recently made me feel better about any minor exam-related panics I might have: a professor of history creating a world chronology based on spectacular errors in student papers. I have a dreadful habit of skipping half the word when I'm writing "ing" in a hurry (so "maintaining" becomes "mainting", for example). I know I do this and keep a weather eye out for it; but even if one slips through, at least I'll know I've never written about a "class of yeowls".

Death notices today: Ces Nosworthy, Carlyle Buntine and Aubrey (known as "Aub") Mattner. Happily, not all old people with great names are dying just yet. Today I also had to read an item about a couple of local Red Cross groups, which held a joint meeting to celebrate fifty years of good works by a lady called Melba Plush. I like that so much, I may actually change my name.

The fact that the Red Cross groups were from Nareeb Nareeb and Brit Brit (both of which are near Drik Drik) made it even more special.

*****
Conversation snippet #1

Man in suit on mobile phone, standing outside court: "Did she say that? She's a moll. (pause) I'm not saying she's a moll because she's a lesbian, I'm saying she's a moll because she's a frigging MOLL!"

Charming.

*****
I should have said last week: I'm having mushrooms for dinner! Out of the box in the laundry, of course. They're not as nice as fresh field mushrooms, but they're still pretty tasty.

*****
Conversation snippet #2
My mother: Did I tell you Sue Lewis bought a new sewing machine?
Me: No, you didn't.
My mother: Well... Sue Lewis bought a new sewing machine.
Me: Really? I hadn't heard.
My mother: Don't laugh at your mother.

The scary thing is that I have heard her have that exact conversation with my grandmother, only playing the other role. Brrrr.

I had a moment of lightheadedness in the chemist's yesterday. Queuing to buy some eyedrops, I found myself standing next to the display of Fantasy Britney Spears and some giddy impulse made me squirt my wrist with the tester. One tiny spritz and... ick! So sweet-smelling! Not my thing at all (my thing being watery scents like L'eau d'Issey). I should have known from the pink Christmas bauble bottle, really.

The problem is that now I can't get rid of it. I washed my wrists when I got home, then I scrubbed them with a nail brush, and then washed them regularly afterwards and still had to put up with it all day. It's still there now, even after my shower this morning. It's in my bed and my clothes and my car as well. I can't get away from myself.

*****
( A meme in which we make the astonishing discovery that I am not a spoilt brat )

WorkChoices, ha! Evil federal government, making me review all our employment contracts. I've got better and far more interesting things I could be doing. It's another of the government's annoying names, too. I still haven't recovered from their smartraveller advisory service, obviously for people who want to ravel smartly.

I just found out a friend has had a baby so I'll do the card-and-present thing this afternoon and post them before all the Easter public holidays. I'll have to be careful, though: my friend was engaged for ages, then we lost touch for a few years, and when we met up again she was married to someone else. Sadly my brain refuses to remember her husband's name; I always want to call him by her former fiancé's name instead. Oops.

I yawned before and got a cramp in my throat: a novel and not particularly pleasant sensation. And I woke up during the night to discover that my right foot had worked its way out of the covers and Miss Pink, sleeping at the base of the bed, had managed to lay the tip of her tail between my first two toes: a startling and also not particularly pleasant sensation. It brought back unhappy memories of the time she caught a mouse outside and decided that the best place to keep the uneaten part of the corpse was in the toe of my shoe.

I had to read an article on air today about someone in court on assault charges for biting someone else's forehead. How would you even do that?

The world news is all so bad lately... earthquakes and hurricanes and war and terrorism and every single thing the Australian government is doing, which is just too depressing to write about. And then you read the sports pages and discover the existence of a Puerto Rican boxer called Kermit Citron, and the world suddenly seems just a little bit brighter.

***

I am currently on leave. Whoo! I have exams this week and next. Slightly less whoo! Actually, I don't really mind exams, as long as I'm well prepared (which I am), so I'm quite enjoying my little holiday. I had even cleverly organised my roster at the radio so I wasn't on this week, but I'll be going in tomorrow anyway. Our third newsreader, Ashika, is moving and tomorrow will be her last day, so Liz and I have planned a little party (being the three of us, plus our producer and maybe the volunteer coordinator) for her after the show.

***

My can opener gave up the ghost yesterday, so I bought a new one today. It came with instructions.

( Warning: these are pretty advanced. Don't try them without adult supervision. )

***

Just in case you missed it: Kermit Citron.