Big glee, big book, no fart

Another gleeful day of not working. Another gloriously sunny and mild late winter's day in Melbourne, with magnolia and jasmine bursting into bloom all over the place. Another personal best in the Global Corporate Challenge - 23,470 steps so far today. I'm a perambulating machine.

In major gleeful news, I saw a new dietician today who thinks I might not need to do the extremely difficult allergy elimination diet I've been attempting for the last 31 years (not really, but it feels like it). She's fairly confident my worst food intolerance symptoms will improve by following a diet that only cuts out foods containing problem sugars (e.g. fructose).  It's SO much easier than the other diet. I can eat in restaurants. I can buy my lunch. I can eat a wider variety of tastier fruit and vegetables. I'm so happy about it. That damned diet has become my nemesis.

I went to the Chapel Street Bazaar after my appointment and bought a little green specimen vase the same as one my mum used to have. She got it when she was a teenager and kept it until well after I'd left home, but it got broken, which she is still a little sad about. I'm going to send it to her. It's not the same as having the original, but it's better than not having it at all.

I nearly bought a 1950s unabridged edition of Webster's Dictionary at the bazaar...partly because it was ENORMOUS and, as you might recall, I have a thing about big books (and words). It was in remarkably good condition for its age and well priced, but I decided it was a substandard dictionary because it didn't include the word 'fart'. Unabridged, eh? Pfffft.

You might think fart was excluded because it's vulgar, but when I was a kid we had an ancient dictionary - all yellow pages falling out, old book smell, the works -  and it not only included 'fart' but it defined it thus: an explosion from between the legs. An explosion! From between the legs! You can imagine the mirth that ensued when my brother and I read this. It makes me laugh now. It was also a little too heavy to lug home, especially with the other stuff I was already carrying. But after seeing the 1888 ad for Webster's on Wiki page, I kinda wish I'd bought it now. Webster's unabridged dictionary: a library in itself.  Maybe it will still be there when I go back. With my nanna trolley.

I bought myself an Etch-A-Sketch. But you probably know that already if you looked at the photo above. Hours of fun for only $15 at Big W. I'm practising drawing robots.

Instead of taking a known route from the dietician to Chapel Street, I walked up Williams Road and found this cool old Coca Cola sign.

Coca-Cola - Be really refreshed

  

And this fabulous ramshackle house. You can't quite see it in this photo, but the house has a name (as old houses often did). Its name is Haven. While I was looking up and appreciating the irony, I was listening to Boy and Bear singing, "Come dancing in the garden of my haven, won't you dear?". It's freakish how often the music I'm listening to provides the perfect soundtrack for what I'm doing.

It was getting towards sunset when I was walking home along the river. I stopped to take some photos of the view towards the city from a little jetty thing down on the river...and didn't stop...well, I did eventually because it was dark and I was hungry. I took 155 photos of the city,  the Our Magic Hour art installation, reflections on the water and trains crossing the Yarra. I walked home excited to see if the photos looked as good on my laptop as on my camera display.  I was not disappointed. Yay. Now to choose a few to blog...

 Part of the Our Magic Hour installation atop the Sportsgirl building

AAMI Park and the city