I don’t know why they call it spring cleaning because for some reason, I never get around to doing it in spring. I guess because spring is such a transient season of a week or two that I never get round to doing it. For some reason, when the mornings are finally starting to cool off again after five months of heat, I get a bee in my bonnet about cleaning the house. Why? Have no idea.

I think perhaps because I am a bit unusual in that I am not driven into activity by the heat. It tends to make me more slothlike than anything. While others are out hitting the beach, I would rather curl up with a book, preferably with a winter time setting so at least my mind believes it is cooler than it really is. During the initial flush of autumn, that’s when I start to come alive and want to do stuff outside. So maybe mentally I am preparing for wanting to spend more time outside by focusing on getting the inside clean enough that I won’t have to worry about those PITA cleaning jobs for hopefully another year.

Domestic goddess I am not. We don’t tend to put stuff away and having given that a thought, it’s because it really has nowhere to be put other than the transient place that it occupies between usage. It’s not that our house is small, it’s more than the morons who designed it didn’t give an iota of thought towards storage space. There is no broom cupboard so the vacuum doesn’t have a permanent home and neither does the broom. The mop and bucket got lucky, thanks to a DIY installed shelf in the laundry and a hook on the wall courtesy of Howard’s Storage World. The kitchen cupboards are not storage friendly. We don’t have other cupboards around the house to store stuff in while it’s not being used.

My other half has a logic that if you don’t have places to store stuff, then you don’t accumulate stuff. This is false logic because we get given stuff and buy stuff all the time, without chucking out other stuff because that stuff is still needed. So therefore, we live in a constant chaotic mess which although it is clean, is never tidy.

So the domestic goddess has been reawakened and she is itching to try to do the impossible. I wonder how long it will take till she gets the shits like I do and thinks it would be so much easier if we just started the house all over again from scratch.

March 1st, 2009 | Category: Home and Lifestyle |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (2)

Wow…I’ve made it to a 3rd batch of daily photos! By my reckoning, I’m up to Day 53 of 365. I headed up to Caloundra for a couple of days this week so I was able to snap a photo of something other than the mundane. It was a nice couple of days, even with the rain….just as well because our next break away won’t be for some time.

February 22nd, 2009 | Category: Phoney Photos |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (1)

I’m a new convert to Claudius Day….don’t know who Claudius is? He’s the guy who sentenced Valentine to death….it’s just more a pity that he didn’t do it sooner. I don’t like Valentine’s Day. I hate that there is a special day set aside out of the calendar to do something nice for the person you love. WTF is up with that? That should be every day of the year! Just like you don’t need Mother’s Day or Father’s Day to remind you to be kind to your parents. It should be something that comes naturally if you are even remotely a decent human being (and that your parents are as well).

But all the same, Valentine’s Day rocks around every year on February 14th like it or not. This year I decided to rebel and not go have dinner somewhere nice and eat in at home. I thought all the same I would try and do something a little spesh so I decided to have a go at some rice paper rolls. I guess I was excessively comforted by the words on the packet – versatile, quick and easy to prepare. I would like to let anyone know that Trident is lying about most of that unless you have some kind of Chinese cooking guru gene or perhaps some savvy Nigella know how. Unfortunately I got left out of the cooking gene pool so in my experience, they are time consuming and fiddly. Regardless, they are incredibly yummy if you can get past the fact that they look like a stir fry wrapped in plastic.

Vietnamese Roll Fail!

February 14th, 2009 | Category: Fail Cooking, Special occasions |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (2)

Shortly after we returned from Tasmania last year, my other half told me about an adoption program running through the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital. Unlike a lot of other zoos running similar programs, the koalas up for adoption at Port Macquarie are all wild koalas in need of veterinary care after car accidents, dog attacks or bouts of chlamydia.

They are a charitable organisation and rely on the support of the public in the form of donations or adoptions to keep their hospital running. We have already adopted one koala, Warrego Martin, in January this year. I am planning on adopting a couple more this month, particularly with the ongoing bushfires in Victoria.

For more information on adopting a wild koala ($40 within Australia or $50 from Overseas) or making a once off donation through Pay Pal, please see the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital webpage for more information.

February 10th, 2009 | Category: Adoption Programs, Wildlife |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (8)

I think if for some reason that I had to be sequestered away for an unknown period of time on jury duty, I’d want to do it in a Borders book store. Preferably the three storey one in the city but if I can’t go there, the one in Mt Gravatt will do nicely. Sheriffs of local counties please take note for future requests for jury duty. Thank you.

What I love about Borders isn’t so much that they have a Gloria Jeans coffee shop in there (personally I’m partial to Zarraffas but any port in a storm) but that no matter what the subject title, they invariably have a book for it. And not just one book either, generally several – unless it’s a really obscure title like Gourmet Cooking for Dummies. I’m assuming the reason why there is only one copy of that title at Mt Gravatt is because people who wish to be gourmet cooks generally have other ways of going about it – like a cooking class or they have “the way” about them. They don’t really need a book to tell them how to cut an orange in a fancy pattern, they just know. It’s genetic….or at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Speaking about cooking, I don’t know why it was that I ended up in Borders looking in the cook book section. I had a voucher for a full price book 30% off so you would think I would get something somewhat entertaining like a Peter Moore travel lit book or maybe something funny by Jeremy Clarkson. For some reason I glossed past the travel lit section and even the funny section and ended up with cooking. The Mt Gravatt store is only small (in comparison to the city), so there’s only about 12 shelves packed full of books all related to recipes, preparing food or the cooks themselves like Gordon Ramsay. I suspected it would start with “now if you can’t F’ing bother F’ing doing it right, then put the book down and F right off”. So I took the advice I imagined would come from it and didn’t even pick it up.

I did pick up Rachael Guy’s book in the picture below to look at it, only because I thought the title was amusing. Guy Food. It’s a pretty small book and the content fairly light on – is that because she assumes that most guys would not want to be able to cook a terrine of duck or some other poncy recipe involving stuffing a squid head. Which brings me to another point – cook books are exactly like mix CDs. Most of the stuff is on it is ok but there will always be at least 3 songs on the CD which you absolutely can’t stand. Cook books are the same, only most of them have entire sections I would turn my nose up at. Anyway, I could cook anything in there without even needing a recipe for it so I put it back on the shelf and ended up with a book called Easy Comfort Food. One day I may even open it again to cook something from it.

Does that mean they have to cook it too?

February 7th, 2009 | Category: Fail Cooking, Home and Lifestyle |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (1)

Here’s the second lot, I honestly didn’t think I would get to the end of a month doing this but what do you know? It seems easier than I gave it credit for being. I know – famous last words!

Left to right in rows: 1. My new piggy bank for my camera fund; 2. Yogen fruz!!! Completely guilt free dessert, NOM!!; 3. Santa's on a diet; 4. I <3 Snoopy!!; 5. The road home; 6. New lens!; 7. Ashgrove Farm Cheese from Tassie (still not eaten BTW); 8. Nights in green satin; 9. Nosey Rosie;10. Non-fried rice (yes they are prawns in there; 11. Unexpected water feature under the deck of a friend's house; 12. Rosie's paw; 13. Assembling the purdy blue bike; 14. The new bike rack (yes it still stands, even with two bikes on it); 15. Mt Stapylton and the "golf ball"; and, 16. Best relaxative equipment ever!

February 1st, 2009 | Category: Phoney Photos |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (2)

I hate to admit it but I usually do anything to avoid answering the door. Random people dropping in has a tendency to annoy me so I figure unless someone has made an appointment, I’m just not answering that knock on the door. The only exception to the rule is Australia Post deliveries and couriers, both of which seem to arrive at predictable times of 8:30am and 1:30pm when invariably I am not home to accept receipt.

I ordered a new lens a while ago and knew that it would be delivered sometime in the next few days. So even though I broke the rules and answered the door after 4pm when I got home, I’m so glad I did. Overnight delivery is awesome! Thanks Foto Riesel! I can’t wait for the weekend to give it a good workout.

It's finally here!

January 29th, 2009 | Category: Photography |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (3)

I spent most of the summer waiting for the last week in January to rock around so all the kids can go back to school. Of course, I don’t have any myself but I have the distinct misfortunate of being the only childless house in a street full of school aged children. They spend their summers being an extreme source of annoyance to me, completely unbeknownst to them of course. The yelling, the screaming, the sooking and crying – and that’s just coming from their parents.

This year has brought a new form of torture in the days leading up to their first day back at school. Bloody recorders! I hate them! What I hate even more is that the very same children who won’t do prep work for maths or English during their holidays are quite happy to “practice” their bloody recorders for HOURS on end! Whether it’s Mary Had a Little Lamb, Hot Cross Buns or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, it’s all absolutely infuriating.

Of course, it could always be worse. They could have a cornet. Without a mute. Like I do. And play the C Major scale ad infinitum. Just like I plan on doing shortly if that bloody recorder does not SHUT UP!

Incidentally, given that it is Australia Day – to all the Aussies out there, may your afternoon be full of BBQ, booze, backyard cricket and a lammington or ten.

January 26th, 2009 | Category: Home and Lifestyle |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (8)

Cats....always watching and secretly mocking your efforts.

I’d like to know exactly why it is that as soon as there is anything that comes with the instructions “some assembly required”, I always tend to think it can’t be too difficult. After all, if it was too difficult to do, then they would sell it whole – or at least warn you that it’s a pain in the butt to do it yourself. Personally I think anything from Ikea should come with that warning but that’s another story. The last couple of days I was thinking of how nice it would be to have a couple of bikes that we could take riding out along the bay, or up at Daisy Hill or even when we went away for short breaks up or down the coast.

I already had a mountain bike from my teenage years, still not in bad nick but there is one thing terribly wrong with it (sorry Mum, for she bought it for me). It is the most ghastly shade of pink you’ve ever seen (again, sorry Mum). If you can think of that fluoro pink mixed with fluoro high visibility vest type orange, that is the kind of pink that it is. In retrospect, I’m guessing that’s why we ended up getting the horrid pink/orange – ghastly, but at least I’d be easily seen on my treks to and from school. I figured my sister doesn’t have a bike, nor is she completely turned off by the revolting pinkness of my old one, I would kindly donate it to her.

So off on a 5hr quest we went to find two bikes for the both of us that wouldn’t break the bank. After visiting the first bike store, the prices almost gave me chest pain. Their “budget” bike for recreational riding was somewhere in the realm of $800. Granted, they were very pretty and they had disc brakes instead of the standard ones on a cheaper bike but OMG, I could buy two flash sticks for that price. Or another lens! And then the standard price comparison – OMG that’s a bit over half my fortnightly pay! For just one!

Then I remembered seeing bikes in a Big W catalogue, so we hit Target because it was the nearest department store. Their selection was dismal so off to Big W we went, ending up somewhere in Capalaba where I found my pretty blue bike – only they didn’t have any in stock to sell. BUT having found my 2 wheeler beast, I was not going to be deterred by such a simple thing as “no stock available”. A few hours later, we ended up at the Big W closest to home and got my blue bike there as well as a silver one for my other half – all for half the price of what we were looking at for one gotten from a specialty store.

There was just one catch – they were only 90% assembled and you do the rest of it yourself when you get home. Now I figured this can’t possibly be too hard. I mean, thousands of mums and dads do this at Christmas time every year in the few hours before Christmas Day itself. Surely if it couldn’t be done very quickly or easily, they wouldn’t do it. Big W does offer a bike assembly service for $16 or so per bike but the cheapskate in me insisted that such a small job wasn’t worth that much.

Let’s just say, if you have a bad track record with Ikea products, then just pay the $16 for pre-assembly and be done with it. It’s not as big a headache as putting a book case or a filing cabinet together but it’s still one hell of a pain in the rear.

January 24th, 2009 | Category: Cats, Home and Lifestyle |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Comments (3)