Pic of the Day 30, June 2007

pic of the Day 29, June 2007

Postcard Project...

Pic of the Day 28, June 2007

A bunch of my best mates met up for a party in NYC...

I wasn't invited.

Typical...

Pic of the Day 27, June 2007

Hometown Crime of the Week!

12:32 a.m.-Dallas

[911] caller thinks some kids are blowing air
under her trailer house making dust to come up from the floor
and they have cinnamon rolls.
She can smell the rolls from outside.
She doesn't see anyone though.
She states that if dispatch sends an officer to her home,
she isn't going to open the door.
Officer told to drive by the area.

Pic of the Day 25, June 2007

Pic of the Day 25, June 2007

Pic of the Day 23, June 2007

Happy Birthday Erin

Pic of the Day 23, June 2007

Pic of the Day 22, June 2007

Postcard Project 2007

The aftermath...

Pic of the Day 21, June 2007

Today is the Southern Winter Solstice...

Pic of the Day 20, June 2007

Pic of the Day 19 June, 2007

We have been stealing and eating pomegranates from

our neighbour's tree all autumn and with this one
we've finally come to the end of the season.

The Evolution of Our Living Room: Part 10

Finished...for now.

Evolution of our Living Room: Part 9

The couch arrived,

a table,

and we picked this poor gal up off the street!

Evolution of our Living Room: Part 8

We refinished a table,

cleaned up some old chairs,

a mini-bar,

Evolution of our Living Room: Part 7

We hated this window as well.

So we took it out.

And replaced it with this big old monster!

The Evolution of Our Living Room: Part 6

The room had a cheap looking aluminium window

that looked across into the neighbour's kitchen.

So we replaced it with two smaller
leadlight feature windows.

The Evolution of Our Living Room: Part 5

We painted. You wouldn't believe how many
layers of undercoat it takes to cover "Bangali Yellow".

The Evolution of Our Living Room: Part 4

Then we laid them back down.

The Evolution of Our Living Room: Part 3

The floorboards were in terrible condition.

So we pulled them up.

The Evolution of Our Living Room: Part 2

Here we can see the footprint of life
left in the carpet by the previous family.
They moved in 20 years ago and apparently,
so did the carpet.

Once we pulled the carpet up we were in for a real treat.
Let me tell you, dedoratve yellow and green lino
with a semi-art deco starburst pattern
was hard to resist.


But we did and this is what it looked
like after we finished with it!

The Evolution of Our Living Room: Part 1

Here we have a before picture.

This is an actual pic posted on the realtor's site.

Winter 4 June, 2007

COLD Days
Part TWO:

The second part of a rant about my intolerance for winter...

I was soaking in the bath the other night imagining what it must have been like, before the advent of central heating or especially heated plumbing. Imagine having to boil water over an open fire to take a bath. And how many teapots would one have to boil to fill a tub this size? The previous pot full would be cold before the next was hot enough to be added. I’ll bet I’d be a hell of a lot dirtier than I am these days.

Imagine that…It wasn’t that long ago either. Honestly, Mauzi and I went through more than one inner-city Melbourne house that still had an outhouse as the only toilet and one poor little old lady had to walk out the kitchen door, down a flight of rickety wooden stairs and under the back of the house into what used to be a coal cellar to take a bath. Nothing down there but a bare tub, a couple of rusty pipes snaking down from the kitchen above and a ratty old towel on the dirt floor. Gives new meaning to the term “fixer-upper”.

We bolted from that property. No kidding, the agents chased us down the street ringing the auction bell after us!

But who am I to complain really. Matt, my mate in Japan, moved from metropolis Tokyo to the mountain town of Niigata on the west coast of Japan to teach at the local university. They set him up with a place near campus. In winter, in this house, wherever Matt goes, the space heater follows him like a loyal dog and ice forms in the rooms they leave behind. Yes, ice! Dishes freeze in the sink, spoons in teacups and towels turn cold and hard as plaster if left to hang in an unheated space.

You’d never imagine that in a country so technologically advanced, so on the cusp of the future that is modern Japan…You would never imagine that people have to live in such rudimentary and archaic conditions. Here is a country whose toilets talk, warm to your body temperature and mask your anal utterances with the pleasant sounds of waterfalls and the music of Yanni! Here is a country that throwing cash bribes at small island nations to persuade them to vote to kill humpback whales for “research” (school lunches) that no one in Japan wants to eat anymore anyway. Hey Korizumi, it’s the twenty-first century man! The people don’t want blubber, they want insulation!!!

So I guess I don’t have it that bad after all. No frozen sinks, no ice storms and no “snow-days”. Come to think of it, I sure do miss those snow-days. Maybe we can have a “frost-day”. Doubtful…

Pic of the Day 3, June 2007

An Amazing Italian Deli
Lygon St, Carlton

Pic of the Day 2, June 2007

The First Day of WINTER: 1, June, 2007

COLD Days
Part One:

I wrote this about a year ago now but the weather took and warmed up, distracting me from publishing this post. As today is the first day of winter here and quite chilly I though I'd revisit my thoughts...

It’s so bloody c-c-c-cold in the house today I can b-b-b-barely type. Brrrr! My knuckles are stiff and my fingertips numb. Because we’re scrounging and saving every dime, we have refused to turn on the central heating. As a consequence we hole ourselves up in one room of the house that has a constant source of heat, the living-room. It’s here that we keep a fire stoked in the open fireplace. It’s in this room that we have become squatters in our own home. It’s here that we take our meals, work, entertain and sleep (on the hide-a-bed).

Four years ago, when I signed on to move to this country I had concocted in my head an image of a sun-kissed land ala Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) beckoning,” Throw another shrimp on the bar-bee!” This reinforced by the legions of travel books showing nothing but images of miles of bikini speckled beaches and kangaroo populated deserts and bloody big red rocks!

So I showed up with a duffle bag full of shorts and warm weather camping gear. It wasn’t so bad at first as I arrived soon after Easter, which is very early autumn (not fall as for lack of deciduous trees) and the days were sunny and warm.

Well before the cold set in we packed the car and drove as far north as a Toyota Corolla can go without being washed down a crocodile infested rainforest river. We made it as far north as the Daintree National Park in far-north Queensland before we turned south, staggering our return with beaches and warm pacific waters. This carried us into June…the gateway to the winter months.

It wasn’t until we returned to Melbourne that my illusion of a year-round tan began to fade with the ever-tumbling mercury in my Celsius thermometer. I was lost! What does 15* Celsius mean? Short sleeves and a light coat? I know 15* Fahrenheit is damned cold but this was true trial and error for me.

Pic of the Day 31 May, 2007

Pic of the Day 30 May, 2007