where there's smoke there's fire woohooo

phoebs that's funny (nice funny) you remember my mum's wedding. It's a bit of a blur for me :) they had their tenth anniversary in may.

Dave, the other tech here, said it was heaps smokier the place he just came back from, and it reminded him of lord of the rings, how in the book especially they go on about how the air and sky was grey and grimy and then like dusk or something all the time. I thought that was a very poetic adventurous way to see things. Although in the book it is dreary, dreadful and end-of-world-ish.

I wish I could add a song/music to my posts. Wonder if you can....

I would like to learn how to ballroom dance. Did I already write this before? Oh well. Pete & I went to a dance class once when we lived in Sydney, but you had to dance with every other man and his dog, not just your own partner, so we didn't go back there.

Off any topic, wherever this came from, I want to one day spend Thanksgiving and Christmas in the US. They're only a month apart really. I want to eat odd american Thanksgiving foods like pumpkin pie. I want to go ice skating at the place they always show in the movies (Rockefeller Plaza) and wear fluffy earmuffs and have christmas dinner that is actually climate-appropriate (not that i don't love a climate-inappropriate christmas dinner). It could be worse. It could be traditional to eat pickled christmas tree or something.

Working so very hard

I will confess straight away that I am writing this blog at work. To my boss, if he ever read this (doubtful), I am too tired to do that other stuff you normally let me do when I have no other legitimate work to do. It's friday afternoon 10 days before christmas and i need a holiday :). I jump when the phone rings and have to think about where I am. There's nobody else here. The boss has away on a job for days and the other tech is out on another job.
The 'other stuff' i do quite happily for everyone concerned, when I have nothing else to do, is my counselling diploma that i have been trying to complete for i don't know almost 4 years?! Well, I'm almost there. Nice bosses and slow afternoons and all. Although when you're doing some heavy topic it gets a bit distracting when you get a customer at the same time wanting an aerial for his radio.

Ooh I just had a bunch of customers all come in at once, all wanting different things.

They just played a Cuban version of Joy to the World on ABC fm talkback radio. It was cool.
Have you ever heard someone say 'apropros' in everyday conversation?

To continue on with the weather, which is not just the reigning topic of farmers and old men, I was in a popular large discount store the other day (where I saw you tor, but another other day), and I was way out the back when I heard this really loud noise. I thought 'my goodness what is that it's so loud, it almost sounds like really heavy pouring rain. But it wouldn't be that' (haha ha). I thought ' I'm standing near this fan thing in the roof, it must be the aircon kicking in, and it's got something wrong with it, it's so loud'. And I went about my shopping business. But when I left, lo and behold, it had been raining after all. Like what an unusual occurrence. In my defence, it was hot and sunny when I went in the shop, and I don't think the rain lasted very long.

They're talking about carols by candlelight on the radio. We went to the good old local carols on wednesday night. Not that they were real candles. (Was that in the 'good old days'?!) They probably would have set something on fire anyway its so dry and it was probably a total fire ban too haha. Complete with aeroguard and mosquitoes, stuff-ups and children running around crazy, SES volunteers and a truck bed for a stage, a generally fire-smoky atmosphere, bbq sausages and a woman dancing away by herself to the side (with a few primary school girls in her wake at one stage). I love the local carols. I wish I'd bought my camera (of course I do). We did our own few songs as well, it sounded not so good from where I was but who knows. It was enjoyable.

I was reading some google thing and the remember to get milk or whatever it is reminded me of that book Kumquat May I'll Always Love You (what a name hey). Where the mother goes out to get butter or something and doesn't come back for years. And the teenage daughter (left by herself) pretends to everyone that her mother is still there and pays the bills and answers the phone in her voice now and then. For years.

That book was one of those that used to fascinate me. (I've got a lot of those!!). There's a (kids? young teens?) book called 'behind the attic walls' with a bizarre story about people dying and becoming dolls or something. It's not twisted when you read it, just weird.

There's a book called 'The Long Walk' about an escaped political prisoner in the soviet union that claims to be a true story but who knows if it is or not. I'll ask God when I get to heaven if that book was true. Why not. It would bug me forever otherwise.

I do love true stories, be they biographies, just plain history, 'adventure' tales, whatever! Interesting non-fiction. If I had five cliches I had to eternally choose from, that one 'truth is stranger than fiction' would be one I'd pick. Because it often is. And more interesting too. Although being stranger than fiction isn't always a good thing. Not the 'disbelief at horrific true things that are worse than any fiction' kind of 'strange'. Well the world is often really not a nice place. Although sometimes it can be.

Speaking of books, I think I will start reading Tomorrow When The War Began again, when I finish my current book (The Hobbit).

There is a desk calendar sitting here with a photo of 'Cook's Bay, Moorea'. It looks so good. Peaceful. I want to visit there.

Instead of Mr Whippy, I wish a Mr Chocolate or some such happy musical vehicle would drive itself on over here so I could run out the front (disregarding any customers who happened to be present), and get myself a nice freddo frog or rolo packet or something.

Urrrgh I hope they're not putting the cricket back on the radio again this afternoon.
They were discussing 'nucleation' before, whatever that may be, and fire-induced weather patterns. It would have been rather interesting but I didn't catch the start of the conversation so didn't get half of what they said.

Ooh, I think the other tech is back at work.

More delayed blogs...

This is another delayed blog, but this one actually written on PAPER, can you believe it, and transcribed to here and now....

Sitting at work, very half asleep. I feel like a cat in the sun except I'm not really allowed to just go to sleep.

It's very hazy/ smoky outside & it's making my throat all scratchy. When I got up this morning, I thought it was about to rain because it was cold & so overcast outside & thought 'how odd, rain', but then realized it was smoke. And that orange blob in the sky was the sun trying to shine. Well, it could have been worse and pitch dark like it gets closer to the fires, and I could have gone back to bed thinking that the clocks were wrong and I still had 4 hours sleep left.

So this week everyone talks about the fires. Last week (and forever), everyone talks about no rain, and where do the fish go, and the river's been dry before. And a couple of months ago, everyone talks about hail. We love the weather.

Pete's just had his birthday, and I made him a nice steak & vegies (his choice) & he even picked the steak out for me (for which I am especially grateful b/c I think the meat aisle is grose). I bought him a cake/pie thing & stuck candles in it (no time to make one). I wonder if people ever tried sticking candles in the steak or another preferred birthday food item. Although Pete loves his dessert.

I wish we had a digital camera. I always see something I want to take a photo of. Too expensive and space consuming with an ordinary camera.

Other day, I went outside to see what Polly the dog was barking about & she's 10cm away from a half-grown magpie, barking her head off. It's just sitting there looking at her. The parent magpie is sitting on the fence just watching & maybe squawking now and then. I think everyone was a bit confused. It must have been learning to fly and landed in Polly's yard and not figured out how to get out again. I went & got Neville to help me & we threw it over the fence.

Speaking of the weather (as you do), it's been so dry that things like the gatepost to the dog yard shift in the ground. Our back flyscreen door was stuck & wouldn't close/open properly. Neville said he'd take a look at it, and so when I went to close it one day and it closed perfectly beautifully, I thought oh he must have fixed it the other day when he was over doing whatever that was (hanging blinds I think), and I thanked him the next time I saw him. He told me later he didn't fix any door and that it must have been the ground drying out and shifting it back in place. And that the ground shifting was probably the reason for it getting stuck in the first place. So we have a magically cyclically shifting door that doesn't like the weather. Long and probably not that interesting to anyone else, but I was fascinated.