Whisky Blues

Well, 3/4 of a bottle of Macallan 12 over two night gave me GORD.  And gave me the munchies at midnight.  And caused my exercise desire to flee.  If I am to continue pushing my BMI downward, then I will have to discontinue EtOH consumption.  At least until we visit the Rockpool restaurant during the F1 weekend.  My prediction for my Saturday morning weigh-in is:  moderate weight gain.

palace of aged beef - and pasta hopefully

Have just booked Park&Fly and now will think Rockpool thoughts.  We have previously eaten there quite late - 2100 - but Jen isn't likely to last that long, so I think 1900 with the crowds is our main option.  Closer to home: we will tonight hit a different Indian restaurant to make it two of those in three days.  You have to be excessive sometimes when Mum's away...  I also just realised how close my holidays are - woot!

Indian fast food

I have been watching the MotoGP testing and am pleased to see Mr Rossi performing like his old self.  Mr Marquez is currently home relaxing with a broken fibula - all's good, he'll be back. 

Sir Rossi

My Taff seems to be settling in to life on campus.  She has labeled her lectures (so far) as being great, fun, interesting...  Uni must have changed since I was a lad ;-) 

 

I AM listening.  What?

And then...

Several days have passed.  The dog doesn't know this.  He thinks everyday is Thursday because that's the day Jennie gets home from gymnastics at 7pm to hear him woofing at the garage door.  Not that he is entirely proficient at telling time either - his clock only has two temporal divisions - nap o'clock and bark o'clock.  Last night (and the night before that) we (Lach and I and the Twins) have slept (on mattresses - a form of camp-in) on the lounge room floor and have had the privilege of listening to our middle aged miniature dachshund talk in his sleep.  Lach (who regularly stays awake until dawn studying maths, history and zombie killing at his PC) confirmed that Pippin habitually mixes his nap-and-bark o'clock discernment in the wee hours, and that this is not just an expression of his sorrow at having Taffy (and Jen) missing from his bark o'clock hours. I miss them though.

Let sleeping dogs snore

Fifty days into the year 2014 saw me re-enter the dismal and forbidding doors of Dan Murphy for the first time since the last days of the year following 2012.  My purpose is this diversion to the house of liver abuse (following a lovely Club Saffron Indian visit) was to procure a bottle 18yr old Macallan scotch whisky.  Now - most whisky experiences are best experienced with passion and anticipation of exquisite flavours and subtleties of palate, and the Macallan range is no different.  I usually work my way up through a distillers range from youngest to eldest in order to comprehend what the master in-charge of blending has tried to achieve.  So I skipped the 18yr old, and also the 15 and bought the modest 12 Fine Oak.  To my nose came grasses and peach, the palate has green fruit with slightly oily herbs, and the finish is shortish with mixed spice.  It was shortly after that I discovered two disturbing facts:  the first was that 100ml of this (or any other) whisky has the same kilojoules as a large Hungry Jacks fries. The second is that I had already bought a bottle of 12yr Fine Oak in November - and I could have skipped it and moved onto the 15yr.  Oh, for a good memory.

4 mattresses, but not stacked

This blog is not a weight-loss journal.  I have another blog for that.  I added to that one 21 times in four months several years ago, for a grand total of 16kgs lost bringing my BMI back into the low 20s.  A year has passed since then, and I have lost a further 8 kg.  I also put 12kg back on in between, so it's not all roses and cappuccinos.  But it's fun to have only jeans that fall down on your hips like a teenage rap delinquent complete with a backwards baseball cap.   I hate rap.  Purely for the selfish reason that I've never heard an example that vaguely interests me.  I think the spread of such music is a wee bit like an Emperor cat-walking a new very shear outfit.  Youngsters (and some oldsters) profess to enjoy it because it's in fad, and they don't want to appear square.  Either that, or I'm just an old bastard with no tolerance for change.  I like metal music - old and new, gothic and doom, thrash and speed, NWOBHM and viking.  It doesn't even have to come from northern Europe - but it helps.

Within Temptation - the best.

Life & Wisdom & Stuff

No quotes, just reflections on the things that bounce around in my head.

This is the day my eldest left the nest and headed some several hundred kilometers south to start university.  I will miss her smile and world view!  I guess it's quite wrong to hope she abandons after one semester and comes back home forever?  It really does only feel like yesterday that I took a year off work to be a house-husband so I could look after Taff - it was 1994.

Lake Wakatipu, Jan 2013

Embrace honest sadness, it has great healing properties.  So does laughter, but I was never as good at that as Taff is!

Coffee is a two pronged sword.  But I never worked out what the first prong did.  The second is just the headaches when you go cold turkey.

Emotional self indulgence is the biggest enemy of happiness.  Don't dwell on painful things ever - go somewhere else in your head, it's a big place. Remember that admitting that you're bored is an insult to your own imagination.

You can't change the past, but you can shape the future.  Don't look back and regret, do something.  Embrace the future with a positive outlook, '...sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof...'.

Tasman Glacier - a somewhat knackered Taff!

Believe in people.  They see the world differently and have differing hopes and dreams.  They aren't limited by you.

If you feel you have to drink scotch, buy the good stuff.  Once you stop drinking for pleasure alone, it's a very slippery slope.  The same doesn't apply to chocolate - there is no good chocolate.  Cheese is somewhere in the mid zone. 

Wasted hours are not wasted if we spend them together.  I'm not sure if that applies to WoW, or SWTOR, or Tera, or Rift, or LOTRO, or POTBS, or computer time in general, but it's still better than being apart.

We reap what we sow - and the harvest is coming.  Don't pretend to look surprised when it arrives.

Bare feet, 2degC, Lake Tekapo

Don't watch or read or listen just to support your own beliefs.  Keep an open mind and be changed by what you experience.

Life never stops.  It's cycles are sometimes slow and seem stagnant, but they will spin off into distant memory all too soon.  Choose to enjoy today.

There is a negative correlation between how often you weigh yourself, and your BMI.  There is a correlation between global gross human industrial pollution and climate change.  the earth is not just big boned.

A fracture, a break and a crack are synonymous.  I used to think radiography was a grey zone, but it's fairly black and white.

Never take the easy way out.  Unless it's egg and noodles.  Or pizza.  Or both.  But at least consider the vegetable omelet option.

Crown Range Rd lookout.

Happiness and love are not arbitrary or concrete states of being.  They are choices we make every minute of every day.  As RLP said once:  '...if you want to love, choose to love, and be patient.'  If you want to be happy, choose to be happy and you will find happiness right where you are.  

I did say I wouldn't include any quotes here (there are at least three so far, but it doesn't really count as a quote if you write them from memory), but this is from a good friend:  "You chose your life, as do we all, in a million tiny valuings." (el Bravo)

Never forget God.  It's easy to structure our lives without Him, and an effort to trust and obey what we know to be true - but that's the only life course we can follow that won't eventually sink into regret.  It's no wonder the word 'fight' was chosen.  Fight the good fight - it's a fight against yourself as much as anything, and not a fight we can win alone.

Anyway my Taffy - I'm very proud of you and I always will be.  You get out there in Avondale academia-land and kick butt, have fun, work hard, make some good friends, and - if you can manage it - eat properly :-)

Starts

If some ways, the year starts now.  It's partly the fact that WSBK and NASCAR kick off this weekend.  And it's partly because Taff is running away to college on sunday. I think I'll pick up a The Macallan 18year dollop of liver poison to anti-celebrate.  Having Mr Sykes circulating with the number 1 on his bike will be way cool this year.

A picture of Bass Strait.

My MR training has progressed to the point where I now know what things I don't know, rather not knowing anything at all.  I've skipped the idea of a UQ Masters and will head down the road of AIR accreditation instead - mainly because I want to cover the theory of pulse sequences before 2016...  Getting into an MR seat is a bit tricky at the moment with a shortage of radiographers on deck.  One decided to take the year of to complete an arts degree, and the boss therefore decided not to replace them.  Another destroyed her knee in a netball game and won't be back for several months.  So now whenever someone else calls in sick with the flu or a hangover, I end up solo in U/S or (gasp horror) end up supervising in general - with nary a magnetic field to be seen.  Ho hum.

Scottishness

The dirt riding is fun at the moment.  Andy and Kobe have joined Lach and I on our verge trimming trips the last several times.  They both claim to have become 'addicted' to the dust, fumes and lack of adhesion.  All's good then.  

Andy and Kobe scaring the cattle.

February the mid

All things change and life moves on.  The year 2014 feels like it has just started, except that it's already 12.6% gone.  I've had a dry 2014 so far, and have therefore dropped my BMI by 1.8, and regenerated a few liver cells.  After a January flying solo U/S, I've started training in MRI.  The physics is fun, but a bit of a head spin at times.  I'm enrolling in a UQ MR masters - but how far beyond grad cert I get will depend on finances.

(someone's head, from somewhere)

Speaking of finances, my Taff will be heading off to college next week. I still have no clue as to what she's actually studying, but I guess I'll work it out as the year drifts past. Jen will drive her the 8 hours south, and help her through the registration process.  A few weeks later we'll all be passing through en route to the Melbourne F1, so we'll be able to inspect how untidy her dorm room has gotten...  Cooranbong is a nice quiet town, and is home to mostly happy memories for Jen and I (high school not always being pleasant) and it will be nice to see Taff construct some pleasant memories of her own from that town.  All four of her grandparents live within a few minutes drive of college - it's a pity she can't drive yet - but that's a job for later in the year.

(Probably November, given the purpleness)

Lach has spent the last 3 months on gaming night-shift, but is now returned to keeping normal school hours for his year twelve.  A dirt-bike riding hiatus of two months followed a nasty accident before Xmas that saw him unconscious and ambulanced to hospital for an extended stay.  We are both not pushing it quite so hard on the trails since then - it's all about the risk:fun ratio.  Some risks are just not worth it.

(I'd say it was a Renault engine, probably)

Jen has started writing F1 pieces for thejudge13 F1 website.  I've been a continual fan of that sport for several decades (usually in the gaps between MotoGP and WSBK) but my knowledge of it's history extends no further back than the first races I saw in 1983.   Her research into engine and aerodynamic developments has been fun to read.  F1 starts a new era this year with ERS and turbos etc, but historically these upheavals in the rules have occurred many times - the more things change the more they just repeat history.

the week that was

One of about 4000. Potentially. Tis a bit like counting chickens. Anyway, Taff celebrated her 15th birthday this week, and hasn't taken that dressing gown off since. She has now discovered rock grinding and polishing - a process significantly more lengthy than even telescope mirror production, but at least it is automated. Her tumbler will run in 8 powder grade cycles over the next three weeks. Noisy bloody thing it is too.

Taff the fire bug...

In one week's time, my 2 and half year trip down academic lane will be over. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the amount of WoW time it filled has been just uncivilized. It will be a relief to be able to do nothing on a sunday morning without feeling guilty for not studying - because I never got around to opening the books on a sunday anyway. It will be an icy day in antarctica before I consider ever studying again...

come and warm yourself

By this roaring candle. It stopped raining, the floods went away, and the river went down. The view out the back now looks this way:

A well watered and somewhat flat paddock on the north side of Lismore...

Lach and I picked up our mate Justin and went out to visit Lorin and Kirk up the Nimbin Valley road. We tip-toed out through the floods, never exceeding 190kph, and placed Lachy upon a 125cc Thumpstar and said go. He got rather dirty, collected a few bruises, but rode for 2 hours, gained some skills and had a ball.

Lach on his Thumpstar, Kirk, Justin, Lorin and Lach

Lach and I have picked (what else do you do when the girls are away visiting babies?) our order in which the 20 F1 GP qualifiers will finish tonights Monaco race. It's too much work to type them all out - but just take it that we will be peeved if Jenson doesn't win!

keep drinking Neddie

Slowly mark you, but it is going down. Twenty four hours later and even though it has not stopped raining, the puddle in the valley is going away. And, no, unfortunately it never rose high enough to wash the fat man downstream - the tyranny continues....

How long can that cow down there tred water?

Lach and I discovered (for the iPhone) Kingdoms, Racing, iMobsters, Rockstars and Vampires live. So that's where the last 48 hours have gone...

beaten again and again

MotoGP Weeks 2 & 3

Week 2 of the MotoGP championship, the Japanese round, saw Lach and I pick 8 of the top ten in the top ten, but he put two in their correct spots to my one. So the cumulative scores after Japan are:

Lach 30, Cam 24.



The Spanish masterclass by Mr Rossi shed the following light in the Cam vs Lach conflict: Lach picked 9 with 3 correctly placed, and I picked 9 with 1 correct. Best ever result at that track by Mr Stoner - way cool. Scores are now:

Lach 45, Cam 34.

Mr Lach has now won three rounds to my none. Things are looking grimly like an omelet.

beaten

MotoGP Week 1

Battered and bruised by Lachy :
He guessed 9 of the top ten with 4 is the right spots for a score of 19.
I got 9 of 10 also but with only 3 in the right spot for a score of 15.

Next week - revenge!

BTW, it was a cool race of total control from Casey. Valentino will be back though - and the two of them are a class above everyone else. Once again the Yamaha appears to be the bike of choice, with 3 in the top four. The next best Ducati was rookie Kallio in 8th - the people who say Casey only wins because of his bike are loopy, no one else can ride it and haven't been able to for three seasons now. Except maybe that rather cool race won by Mr Corser.

A birthday for two

Genna and Bella have turned a total of fourteen candles. A trip to Sydney was had, and the resulting party was attended by Nan and Pop, Nana and Poppie, Grandad, Phil, Dean, and of course Andy, Keryn and Georgie. As usual there was too much cake and more trips to Keryn's swimming pool than is normally considered sane. But they had heaps of fun and were very sad to leave Georgie and the family behind to come home. There's always next year...

Home is where the hearthstone is #1c

Hometown? The Village of Warkworth, New Zealand was founded by the Newcastle upon Tyne born Mr John Anderson Brown in 1853. It is situated about 3km up the Mahurangi estuary on the Hauraki Gulf, and its early industry included raping the native forests for kauri and boat building. These days it lies less than an hour north of Auckland, and like its sister city in the Hunter Valley, NSW, is designated Wine Country. WW these days has a population of just over 3K and both its schools that I attended (WW Primary and Mahurangi College) have decile ratings of 8. Whatever.

WW upon Mahurangi

One cool 1971 addition was NZ's first satellite station built a few ks south of WW where Brian Fanning, my friend Chris' Dad worked. This was completed just in time to relay the first episodes of the BBC Onedin Line TV series. Just as well, or NZers would never had heard that part of Khachaturian's Adagio of Sparticus.

New Zealand's first Satellite Station

My Dad bought a farm just north of WW in 1969, and we lived there until the end of 1976. It was something like forty acres of hills and swamps, native bush and imported eucalypts, and had sheep, cattle, horses, goats, pigs, ducks, chooks, cats, dogs and guinea pigs. My Mum grew acres of soya beans with the help of Mrs Upton, and we could raid the myriad (not 104) apple, orange, plum, grapefruit and persimmon trees at will. There was a hollow tree beehive just north of the abandoned quarry that we once threw pine cones at... We lived to tell the tale, just.

Google image of the farm

WW in the 70's was known as the Kowhai town. There was even an annual festival I think. In a way that is hauntingly similar to the Beef Week parade of Cowland, the kowhai festival has funding problems apparently. Not sure why this is important.

Kowhai in flower.

Our farm was on the Kaipara Flats road where, when it wasn't raining, the grass was so green it hurt your eyes. You could cycle from one side of NZ to the other in a day and still fill a sack with eels caught on the way by feel with your toes. In winter you would crack the ice in the puddles with your bare feet on the way to school, but the only snow around was on top of the Dome. Our most famous topographic landmark was the Knob. Go figure.

View of Kaipara harbour

My family had lived for awhile in the 60's on Kawau Island, 10km or so off Sandspit. The Former Governor of NZ, Sir George Grey, bought the island in 1862 and introduced many exotic animals and plants that nearly killed the area. I remember first seeing wallabies there when I returned for school excursions in the mid 70's. I don't remember taking a walk down the long pier as a two year old, or falling off the end and floating face down in Bon Accord harbour for several minutes until being rescued by Anthony. Explains a bit really.

Mansion House, Kowau Is

One of the many beaches around WW that I remember frequenting is Omaha. There is a beach at the south end that is pink in colour - due to the abundance of pink and red shell crushed into the sand. Always felt magical to me.

Omaha beach: out past Matakana.

live stretch

Genna got a stretchy leg today. It's the same purple as my Honda, and the same as her nighty. Cerebral palsy is associated with hypertonal and shortened extensor muscles and tendons. A bit of botulism toxin injected into the gastrocs to relax them, and later on a few weeks of serial casting in forced flexion to re-stretch out the affected bits allows her to keep up with her twin sister again, for a few months at least.


My best mate Bravus does not enjoy whistling in the wind and needs the support of the masses to ensure its worthwhileness. Abraham had a visit from the Lord re: Sarah the post menopausal matriarch, and the destruction of Sodom et al. The Lord allowed the fire and brimstone bargaining to drop as low as ten, but still the show went on. Bravus is satisfied with a moderated six to continue his broadcasting, and that makes me happy also. I had three different blogs before this one. Two of these were unchartered atolls in the vast virtual extraweb ocean whose readers numbered zero that I knew of, and that was good. Search engines spoil a bunch of things, including anonymity. Gordon (both before and after we knew him by that name) is a hero of mine in that he gave me some of the ammunition I needed to fight a battle against the dark side (i.e depression). It was a combination of lifting my self back up by own bootstraps, realizing that by myself I could do nothing, and that the place I had got to was a state of mind only. Sounds contradictory I know but it worked well - you need to have been there. I wonder what disassociated agnostic theism actually is? - I thought it meant practicing what you preached live. I did get to visit my friend in the psych unit finally - he's cool, I hope the danger time is past.

Mr B's B'day

The dog is barking. Again. If we were to be intruded upon by those perculiar portions of society who trade in your hard earned household items at the local pub for smack money, then the dog would probably just piss on their foot. Lachy is 12 today. To celebrate this event he found in a large sock a car that sucks on batteries, carrys handcuffs and announces is a loud voice "pull over driver" and annoys the dog. The RC car is a 1/14th scale which makes it about the same size as the dog, and hits about 200kmph scale speed - no wonder the dog barks. If only the dog knew that a well aimed piddle would silence the car forever - could also be why he chooses to piss on my foot regularly. Quite a smart dog really, given that he doesn't actually have a brain.

I have a friend admitted to a psychiatric ward at present and have tried to visit him on four occasions but not actually seen him. Went down the first time and he was asleep, the second time was meal time, the third time it wasn't visiting hours, and the last time he had gone for a walk with his wife. Maybe its an omen - I'll probably try again. I've been a long term semi-regular reader of the weblog belonging to the real live preacher. The guy is unusual, from a long line of depression sufferers who wears his heart firmly stitched to his left cuff. As a preacher he has questioned every aspect of his own spirituality - from caring for his flock to perhaps believing in God. I've always known that you need to talk with a lisp to be a speech pathologist, you need a borderline personality disorder with a sad family history to be a social worker, and now it's obvious that a bipolar mind living in disassociated agnostic theism makes for a practical pastor. I think I was cut out to be a librarian. Go figure.

ancient art

A few of my gothic-period paintings from the early nineties showed up, so I thought I'd post 'em in an effort to encourage myself to rediscover life. That's life outside of work and study, not life outside of Azeroth... I used water colour paint with lashings of gouache on 160gsm black paper. The subjects are all either imaginary or done from memory, with the exception of Stonehenge which is based on an on-site sketch done in 1991. The pieces are un-named, as they should remain until my skill level rises thirty or forty notches.


Generic Celtic cross, early morning


Welsh church, bound to be Llan-something, mid afternoon


Bushfire remnants other side of Hunter river, moons up and holding water


Randy Mamola, 500cc Cagiva, Phillip Is 1988, I think


Stonehenge, sunset, bucks party 3 day trip to the UK 1991, must have been young.

urinaliterary frequency

Number 6 said that I'm allowed two posts per month, so here is the second. Life has been very hectic recently - what with my birthday (either the 5th or the 21st) , work, study and home duties uploaded into the domestic backpack encumbering the forced march of drudgery. Nothing that a debriefing and enhancing guinness hasn't fixed. Actually I've mainly been smacking mobs in WoW and someone else has been doing the dishes, weeding the garden, and mowing the dog. I did find time this week to build my new PC (I used soy sauce rather than hydrofluoric acid - works on sashimi too) and as these words have made it onto the extraweb then it must have worked to some extent. Lachy inherited my previous AMD PC, and the wee twinnies inherited his P4 troublesome truck. I thought for a horrible moment that I would have to join the wireless half of the household but at the last second found a spare RJ45 socket.
Bella, Taffy, Jennie, Lachy and Genna @ Lighthouse beach April 2008

There was a fatal shark attack off Ballina a week or two back, so they shut down the whole coast until they had caught the culprit. Made lighthouse beach a lonely place on which to build sandcastles and chase 2cm albino crabs. It Seems John D (the man to whom I owe many a sanity saving weekend off-call from the last several years) is back off to Tassie with a new love. Good to hear - always been fond of John. Goon, but not forgotten: have just finished torrenting the last of the Goon shows to make up the whole 175ish episode set. Between that and Terry Pratchett: a well rounded education for Taffy.

All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

Susun Sto Helit Cellar Door

Taffy has glasses. They are green. She can read without squinting. Number plates are no longer just rumour.

Because of this, Susun the mercenary can now kick purple 70 butt like no other gnome with a gonne. She just needs to work out who she is!


It's april5 and its raining on my soul. Forty days on call in forty eight. Seven months out of every twelve. Still, could be worse. I could be a chimney sweep for the creatures of the underworld. Am revisiting early Terry Brooks as a diversion from unibloodyversity: the sword of shanarra et al. Is a remarkably good copy of the LOTR plot, and I mean that in the plagiaristic sense. The monsters, the dark lord, the elves, the caverns, the fellowships, the endless repetition. Mmmm, 80's fantasy. Back to metal for awhile to recover.

cake city

Now we are six. Birthdays by the girlies. Paddling pool cake by Taffy. Volcano cake by Taffy. Birthday Dinner by Mummy. Special guest - Nana. Supervisor - Lachy.

Gen and Bel - better cake eating manners than five years ago


Taff's handiwork - a pool for Bull, and a volcano for Gen


the gathered throng


Gen, Nana, Bella

singularity

Found a book in a box. We've been cleaning up. Actually Jennie has been cleaning the house, has dumped 3 to 4 thousand kilograms of interesting, historical, useful (potentially), valuable (to someone, somewhere, sometime), and totally ignored (for most of the last decade) stuff into a skip the size of a standard international swimming championships short course pool.

I have helped by making appreciative grunting noises as more the floor in the house is uncovered, and tried not to cry when a pair of SLI'ed 3dfx Voodoo2 cards went west. That graphics set saw the closest ever 2 person multiplayer NFS2SE shootout around Hollywood in the late nineties. The result sheet said I'd won it even though the times were the same to the hundredth, but the replay showed that Number 6 had his bumper slightly ahead. Legends are made of this.

Anyway Jennie threw it in the skip. So in order to save even one of my several hundred old sci-fi books, I had to take desperate measures. I put one in my work bag, took it to work, and read it. It was a full proof plan, carefully thought out, and brilliantly executed. The book was saved.
Roozle had his phonecam in his pocket when Ed Force 1 came into Sydney.

The concert of the decade was good. Very good. Better than good. Much better. El Bravo said it all really.They can put on a show. I was pleased with having seats but realized afterward that we hadn't actually sat down once the main act started, so next time (provided we're under 60) we will just go gold ticketing on the floor. Bumped into several dudes the following week down town who had gone also - youngsters mainly, born half a decade after the last IM concert we went to at the Hordern. Since then time has past with uni studies and mmorpg adventuring.

WoW has sunk without a trace, and I won't resurrect it until it appeals again. There is a concept known as The Elder Game: it's about what the point is of continuing to play an open-ended game once you have hit the top levels. In Wow you grind, quest and instance in order to get better gear. And once you've got the better gear you can then more ably quest and instance and grind so you can get even better gear so that you can... Had it up to here (chin raised, hand held palm down at level of nostrils) for the moment. The next expansion holds potential though. So what does one do when WoW has gone? One subscribes to POTBS instead. It's very pretty graphically, and complex enough to be interesting. I'll give it a month or so.

The book was written by Larry Niven and called Ringworld. Sort of pre-digital cyberpunk, tiny bit suspect mathematically, a wee bit dated, but a very good read nonetheless.

green green grass of home

Up at 0430, away at 0530 and home by 1330. The last big run for the old truck before we take delivery of the new one. There was obviously no shortage of precipitation during our away.


The local river reached minor flood level for the third time this year as another ten inches fell over the several days prior to our return. Pointless Pippin, the red rat rodent mini dachshund hadn't exactly lost weight at his dog motel either, and the kennels weren't washed out into the Tasman Sea . So all is back to normal. Bought the latest After Forever CD today and am still in a quandary as to the shade of black to wear to the Maiden concert next week. Decisions, decisions.

Just before sunset we were treated with a John Constable sky. Nice.