I am in need of a pep talk

After 4 consecutive periods of dross at Mt Doom SC today I am fairly over it... days like this I don't have much of a problem with trading in my principles for a job at an independent school where I would not have to suffer the blue collar organ bank spawn that clot up the public system.

Hopefully things will improve tomorrow. Too much mediocrity is sucking my will to live. Or at least teach.

Cool

The other day I spied an interesting looking old dresser out in the hard rubbish. It had been painted a hideous brown, and the top was covered in tacky ancient wood-patterned vinyl, but something about it caught my eye. I drove down one night to see if I could dismantle it and put it into the car, but it had been gruesomely nailed in a previous bodgy repair. However I noticed that it was well made, with dovetails on the backs of the drawers, and of sturdy hardwood construction. I noticed a maker's mark in one drawer.

Next morning I returned with some shovels and picks and implements of destruction, and proceeded to remove the mirror stand (mirror is absent) so that it fit in the car.

This weekend I got it into the shed, and started to strip off the vinyl, and then the paint & manky varnish. Reb and I spent a few hours at it today, and it is starting to look quite lovely. Then I googled the maker's name again, and found to my surprise that Tock & Co were owned by a Chinese immigrant who left Australia for Hong Kong in 1920 - so this piece must be the better part of 100 years old!

Really, really tasteless anecdote...

Today Freya was on the toilet and I was hoping for number 2s. I asked her if she was going to do a poo & she said no. I said "The poor surfers won't have anything to hit them in the face." Freya quickly responded "No! They'll have my wee!" We had a good chuckle.

Earlier today Freya sang a complete verse of the Spider Man song* (although today it was "Spider Nippies").

Tonight I went out and disturbed a possum on the back lawn, and it clambered up the nectarine tree to the first branch and sat there regarding me with its big possumy eyes. I'm fairly sure it was imagining what my flesh tastes like. It was still there a few minutes later, so I got Freya out of bed, as she wasn't yet asleep, and we went out and had a look at the big fluffy critter until he (pretty sure of that) climbed up the branch and wandered off. Nice that Boog got to see a live possum for a change!

*Homer Simpson version.

The Holidays Part Deux

The school holidays are dead and buried now... but they were a good break and I got lots of stuff done around the house, and slightly less done in preparation for term 2.

(more to come...)

Consolation spiders

I was chuffed to see a cute wee huntsman, just about 40 mm across, lurking around in the conservatory. It seemed to be rather keen on the black house spider webs, but I think it would have come off second best if it had met one of the full sized blackies...



Speaking of blackies... the one that lives above the auxilliary toilet door has reached full size, and is looking well mean. She even has a boyfriend now (click on pics for the full sized Flickr experioid):



Outside in under the verandah is another full-sized blackie, in a really fantastic rebuilt web.

Happy Holidays are here again W00T!

Easter has come & gone with the consumption of gross quantities of Lindt chocolate bunnies... very bad but I CAN'T RESIST THEIR SIREN CALL, especially now they are 50% off. We've had a couple of trips to the park, an easter egg hunt at Kate's and a road trip to Frankston to check out the sand sculpting before venturing further from civilization to have a squiz at Mt Doom S.C. and have lunch at one of the cafes down the road. In Frankston we foolishly bought "lattes" from a restaurant on the beach - they were toxic vile swill which resembled lattes, or even coffee, in only the loosest sense of the word. They also had a lot in common with raw sewage. Soooooo... we'll be going back there a lot in future. The cafe in Mt Doom was actually fairly nice in the scheme of things.


We actually had a decent rainfall last night... filled the water drum and one of the rubbish bins that I put under a downpipe.

Managed to read a book over the weekend - The Prefect, by Alistair Reynolds, which is a good read. Haven't had a huge amount of time to get much reading done during the term. Now I have just bought Iain Banks's latest, woo hoo!

Spent the first day of the holidays starting to clean up in advance of the arrival of Reb's folks in the coming months. Trying to flog a couple of things on ebay that were left over from the creche trash & treasure from a couple of weeks back. As usual the holidays are going to be a bit packed!

Picked up Freya about 2.30, and then we went on an epic shopping mish in Bentleigh, mainly epic due to the time dilating hell that is the local Coles. Freya was a really good helper, but she got a bit upset when I didn't want to get the "blue butter" that she wanted. She cried "I just wanted you to try it", which was really sad! So I got the blue butter instead & she was happy again. She was a bit tired and nutso this evening, but went to sleep with no fuss.

Was going to do some school work tonight... oh well.

We have finally joined the late 20th century...

We bought a DVD player this arvo.

Home with Freya again today, her mysterious lurgi is hanging about still. We decided to use the antibiotic prescription we were given the other day, as we are running out of explanations for Freya's temperature. It does seem to have made a difference.

Funny conversation at dinner. There was a vege sausage left on the plate and Freya said "That one is for Uncle Pete." We discussed whether the sausage would last that long. She said "Uncle Pete will come for dinner and eat the sausage and have lemonade, and he will say thankyou."