another day

Mr M got all excited last weekend and went out and bought a 2m wide retractable movie screen so that we could watch the FA cup final with a data projector borrowed from work. The game was terrifically boring and became known as the Sweet FA cup. The screen was a great success though, especially with the chillun.

Unfortunately the second time we used it we made a movie choice mistake and ended up sitting through a pile of poo billed on the cover as "the best rock and roll movie ever". Well i guess it could be, if you're 12 and the only other 'rock and roll' movie you've seen is 'Hilary Duff - All Access Pass'. Then again, i hated Amelie so don't take my word for it.

The six year old got her hands on the camera and decided she needed to catalogue every one of her Littlest Pets. Where do they get these ideas from? (She didn't photoshop them into a mosaic though, ehem, i did that)

musings

well that's sorted - it was just a matter of disconnecting the keyboard from the computer and plugging it back in again. Very technical, and now i'm back where i started with no caps lock.

Running around the lake this morning, relieved to see it finally full of water and birds again instead of doing it's impression of a desert, i randomly chose an album to listen to on the ipod. It was Mermaid Avenue - Billy Bragg and Wilco singing songs written by Woody Guthrie probably in the nineteen forties or fifties. These are the songs that Woody, when he was dying in hospital in the late sixties, offered to Bob Dylan telling him to go and find them in the basement of his house in Coney Island. BD made the trip out there but because he didn't find Woody's wife there only a babysitter he left without searching the basement and forty years later the songs fell into the hands of Billy Bragg. Woody had a way with words and i can't even imagine what beautiful songs Bob would have made of them but still, i like this album and Billy Bragg singing (sans cockney accent) Walt Whitman's Niece and Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key are a couple of my favourites.

When i got home there was a package and it was a prize for my bone picture
for whiplash. Thanks Kath lots of fun stuff to make in there.

OH GREAT!

MANY MONTHS AGO I SPILT A SPLOSH OF COFFEE ONTO MY KEYBOARD AND KILLED SOME KEYS. SINCE THEN I'VE HAD NO SHIFT OR CONTROL ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE WHICH MADE TYPING FIDDLEY BUT MANAGEABLE BECAUSE THE SAME KEYS EXIST ON THE RIGHT SIDE. I ALSO HAD NO CAPS LOCK WHICH ISN'T ALSO ON THE LEFT BUT WASN'T A BIG DEAL.

BUT... I JUST PRESSED CAPS LOCK FOR SOMETHING - FORGETTING THAT IT DOESN'T WORK AND... IT WORKED! AND NOW I CAN'T GET THE STINKIN' THING TO GO OFF.

LOOKS LIKE I'M GOING TO BE PERMANENTLY SHOUTING OR I'M UP FOR A NEW KEYBOARD.

plodding on

I've been pretty busy lately with many and varied pursuits. I've been chasing around after a builder or company who'll add a kind of glass/alfresco/conservatory type room to the front of our house extending out into the garden. Didn't realise it was so hard to get people to do stuff but i think i've finally pinned someone down who understands what i'm on about.

I've also decided that i need to learn website design so that i can set up a site to show the graphic/conceptual drawing type work i do. I've been producing lots of scientific/enviromental diagrams for Mark's environmental consultancy and he reckons if other companies and agencies knew i did them, i'd be inundated with work. Not sure if that's right (he's a pretty optimistic guy) but i reckon it's worth finding out and if i don't get that kind of work i can always design websites with my new skills. I'm not sure how i'm going to go about it yet - sign up for a crash course or teach myself - but i've started trying to find my way around Dreamweaver and getting a handle on html. Mark seems to think that the all the technobabble is going to completely bamboozle me (it's not my strong point) so i've got something to prove and it's about time i learnt something new again.

Another of my pastimes at the mo is potting up plants. I've offered to run the garden stall at our school fete this year and although it's still 6 months away! i know if i don't start now the stall will be an embarrassing failure. Last fete the plant stall, which i did a lot of work for but didn't run, made over two grand so i've got a big job to do. I'm pillaging my garden and anyone else's who'll let me.


Today i potted a couple of banana pups which i dug up but i've got no idea if they'll take or not because they came away without any roots at all. I love these kind of experiments though.

browntown

butternuts!

Whenever there isn't a lot going on around here like now (well there's a bit going on - home renos and i'm doing some work and getting paid for it woohoo!) i tend to talk about the garden. I'll never get sick of it even though the same events happen year after year. We've finally had some rain here in Perth so everything's looking great in this window between deathly heat and being completely covered in a solid blanket of fallen leaves. This is the one pumpkin i managed to grow this year with seeds saved from a much bigger harvest a few years ago.

Back then i had a lot more space to sew pumps but now i've planted most of the garden out so this plant is winding its way between the trees and shrubs. I can watch the progress of the pumpkin through my kitchen window but i know when the time comes i'll hardly be able to bring myself to eat such a beautiful thing. As you can see they're a gigantic variety of butternut and even taste great too.