Weird word, Winter Wipeout, summer breeze

Park Street, South Yarra. I love this place. 

(I think I've posted a pic before) 

I had some blood taken this afternoon and when I got home I mentioned to Luke that I'd recently learned a person whose job is to draw blood is called a phlebotomist. I'd seen someone on Facebook the other day who was a phlebotomist and I looked it up. 

Then when I was cooking dinner Luke called me into the loungeroom to tell me one of the contestants on Winter Wipeout was a phlebotomist. How freakish?!

Related: Winter Wipeout is back on! I thought it was on old series, but apparently it's new. Either way, I'll still watch - I can't get enough of seeing people getting whacked in the face or bouncing off big red balls. (Don't tell anyone I'm watching a silly game show instead of 7.30.)

It was a hot day today, but there's now a lovely cool breeze blowing in the window opposite where I'm sitting on the couch. 

Sick but happy

I do not know what's going on with this avocado...

I've been slack at blogging the last couple of weeks, mainly because I've been sick. This is obviously not gleeful, and I'm especially displeased because I've been virtually free of colds, the flu and other contagion for almost 10 years. Yes, 10 years! 

But since I got back from Brisbane at the end of July, I've had a head cold and then bronchitis (for the first time ever), which now seems to have morphed into another head cold. In between those two lurgies, I had a blood clot in my leg (not serious), but I can't blame my faltering immune system for that. 

Anyway, enough of that. On with the gleeful stuff! I remain happy, despite feeling poorly

Today was a quiet day at work, so I had no excuse not to tackle a crappy job I've left on the backburner for too long because there was one aspect of it I just could not figure out the last time I worked on it, and I've been struggling for brain power lately. But today I finally found the answer, albeit through little skill/mental agility of my own, and it was practically staring me in the face the whole time! I feel like a goose, but I'm so relieved it's solved. 

Last night I was doing a Target puzzle on my phone while the AFL Brownlow medal presentation was on TV. There's was something on about the Hawthorn Football Club, whose team colours are brown and gold, which prompted Luke to chortle, "Poos and wees!"...at exactly the same moment I found the word 'poos' in my word puzzle.  (Yes, the puzzle allows 'poos', although it doesn't accept 'pooed' - or 'penis' or 'anus' - but it's not due to American prudishness, as evidenced by the fact that 'vagina' is accepted and so is the C-bomb, the rudest word of them all! It's just because the puzzle a bit shit ('shit' is also acceptable). I just posted a review of the app pointing out its deficiencies and was pleased to see  others making similar comments. Puzzle pedants unite!)

One of the indoor plants we bought recently has sprouted a flower. I was surprised because although it's healthy, it needs to be repotted and I didn't think it would be happy enough to bloom. 

Daylight savings starts this weekend! Hurrah! Winter doesn't seem in any hurry to leave us, but at least the days will start getting longer soon.

Speak of the devil and a new 101 Things list

Luke and I headed to the Booktalk Café in Richmond for a late lunch today. As you can probably tell, it's a cafe and a bookshop.

We browsed the tables of books on display and spotted beloved Melbourne artist Mirka Mora's autobiography My Life: Wicked and Virtuous, and remarked that it would be an interesting read. Then we looked up and who should be sitting at one of the tables? None other than Mirka herself! I was thrilled - I confess I don't know a lot about her art, but I fell in love with her after her appearances on ABC's Agony of Life series. She's not far off 90, but she's so fun and cheeky and seems to have a great zest for life. If I can't adopt her as my Nanna, I want to be like her when I'm old.

We have seen her in Richmond before - she waved to Luke once for stopping to let her cross a road - so I suspect she lives there. I didn't speak to her today - I worry that well known people are tired of being approached in public, but when I was leaving I saw her bid a cheerful 'au revoir' to another cafe patron, so perhaps if I see her again, I'll be braver. 

There were several tables of women near us in the café playing games - cards and mah jong among them. What a fun way to while away a gloomy Sunday afternoon (or even a sunny one). I want to join a games club now. I want to relearn how to play canasta (my family used to play it a lot when I was a teenager) and drag out the Scrabble board. Pity Luke doesn't like Scrabble. No one's perfect, I suppose. 

101 Things in 1001 Days

Some of you might recall a few years ago I had a list of 101 Things to do Before I'm 40. It's only taken me a couple of years to get around to compiling a new list, although this one is 101 Things to do in 1001 Days (partly to avoid this year being 'meh' like last year).  I'm still in the process of compiling the list (I've only got about 70 things so far), but I've decided today is Day One.  

A sample of the list of so far: 

* Visit Iceland

* Get a new job outside law (in another industry, not as an outlaw)

* Go paleo for three months (or longer)

* See an octopus in the wild (and a platypus and a wombat)

* Improve posture

* Learn to use my camera better

* Start ghost signs blog

* Learn to juggle again (I could juggle when I was a teenager)

* Go to the ballet

Much of it is fun stuff because they whole point of it is to make life more fun. Some is scary stuff to push myself outside my comfort zone and some of it is boring, but important, grown-up stuff (like doing a new will and power of attorney). 

I'm excited to start. 

JBPM: day 7

Tonight while sitting on the couch mucking about with my phone I saw mentions of Tesla in my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and then I became aware the word was also emanating from the TV. Not a word that meets your eyes and ears every day and here were three mentions almost simultaneously in three separate media, one referencing the inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla, and two in relation to the electric car maker named after him.  Freaky. 

I wore a new red skirt to work today - a skirt I'd admired in store months ago, but didn't buy and then got for an absolute bargain at a clearance sale a couple of weeks ago. *fist pump*

One more day of work until my birthday holiday. It's going to be a cold, damp day and I'm tempted to spend the day at home re-watching Bored to Death. If not, I think I will take myself out for brunch, a massage and a manicure. 

Wooh! A week of blog posts! Go, me!

Road trip: day 5 - Meningie to Horsham

This is getting ridiculous now, isn't it? I've been back at work for more than a month and I'm still writing my holiday blog posts. I'm going to push on...

Before Luke and I left Meningie, the owner of the motel asked where we were heading. We told her we were going east on the Mallee Highway to Ouyen and she said there wasn't much to see on the way. We knew we weren't taking a scenic route - or what most people would consider scenic - but I didn't bother to explain the allure of a harsh environment, rural decay, ghost signs and old stuff. 

By that measure, there was plenty to see - a 330km stretch of sun-dried paddocks, bleached almost white in some areas, and tiny rundown towns that looked mostly uninhabited. I found only the second ghost sign of the trip in one of these apparent ghost towns not far out of Tailem Bend - I think in a place called Sherlock. 

Two-in-one sign on derelict garage

There was a truck parked at a grain silo opposite this old garage, but that was the only sign of life. That little contraption to the right of the photo below is a dilapidated old petrol bowser  with imperial currency on the measuring panel.   

Hay rolls

We stopped at the bakery in Ouyen for lunch (no, we didn't have an award winning vanilla slice. Cold custard. Gak.) and at the local council office for some advice on visiting the nearby Wyperfeld National Park, the third largest national park in Victoria.  Unfortunately, a four-wheel drive is required to access most of areas of the park, so we were limited in where we could go.  We definitely weren't going to throw caution to the wind here like we did on the beach in Robe. There was literally no one else around, it was stinking hot and we didn't have great mobile reception.  

We saw a big lizard on the road on the way in (a dragon of some type) and a mother and baby kangaroo shading themselves under a pine tree as we drove around the park. We nearly got carried away by flies when we climbed to the top of a small hill to visit the grave of the infant son of the couple who, in the 1860s, owned land that later formed part of the Wyperfeld National Park. (The baby was supposedly delivered by a caesarian section performed by his father!)  

It probably wasn't the best time of year to visit the park, but hey, we were passing by.          

                         

Cottage ruins in a paddock of post-harvest stubble

We decided to visit nearby Lake Albacutya, even though our map said it doesn't have  water in it most of the time. The road we took to get there wasn't the main road and we probably shouldn't have been on it in our Micra  (picture a dirt road, oddly a bit soft, higher on one side than the other and the middle almost high enough to maroon us), but we got there and, of course, the lake was completely dry.   

On the way to Lake Albacutya

We were going to go to Lake Hindmarsh as well, but because our map said it's also "usually dry", we decided not to bother. Naturally Luke later overheard fisherman talking about water in the lake. 

We continued south to Dimboola where we were going to stop for dinner, but there wasn't much on offer. It's a sizeable country town - population around 1,500 - but it looks like it's in a state of decline...or at least a state of no progress.  A big old hotel on the main street was gutted by fire more than 10 years ago and remains boarded up. 

Another derelict Dimboola building (with old signs)

Dimboola does have an awesome ghost sign though. I've never heard of Jellex jelly crystals before. 

 

Although I'm attracted to the aesthetics of decay and dereliction, we saw so many small and not-so-small towns in such a state of decline between Tailem Bend in South Australia and Dimboola that I ended up feeling quite melancholy. A lot of their young people have likely moved to bigger towns or to the city after finishing school and I can't imagine many families moving in to these areas. These places don't have much that appeals to the wine-sipping, cheese-nibbling, pamper-me set from Melbourne, least of all proximity. Small towns within an hour or two of Melbourne have been going gangbusters in the last 10 or 15 years, but sadly their northern neighbours are suffering. Perhaps this is just the way of the world. 

Anyway, enough melancholy. We continued on to Horsham where we stayed the night. The motel owner was leaving in the morning for Robe - "We just came from there!" - and then the Great Ocean Road - "We just came from there, too!". 

Next (whenever that might be): The Grampians

Day 8: Excited about small things again

Do you remember last year I went to see Bill Bryson deliver the Kenneth Myer public lecture at the Town Hall? Well, I did and I really enjoyed it and I've been wanting to see/listen to it again since. I'm excited to have found the lecture on YouTube and I can't wait to see it again. Something for my weekend to-do list. 

I know that I'm getting back to my normal self after my period of gloom because I'm feeling excited about small things again. When we were in Paris in August waiting in the queue to go up the Eiffel Tower Luke asked me if I was excited and I answered honestly: No. 

WHAAAAT? I knew it was bizarre to be in Paris for the first time and not feel excited - to not feel even remotely exhilarated like I was on my trip to New York - but that's how I felt. Then a few weeks ago I was researching a day trip to Maryborough in central Victoria and I got a little bit excited about visiting a tiny village called Bung Bong, which has an abandoned church and an old bridge. Eiffel Tower? Whatever. Bung Bong? Wheee!  (In the end we forgot to go to Bung Bong!)

I had a miniscule spider scrawling on my had on the way home. Its body was smaller than a pinhead and it had to climb over the tiny fine hairs on my hand. People on the tram must have wondered why I was so fascinated by my own hand. 

My iPod battery hit empty just as I arrived home tonight. It's the second time that's happened in the last week. 

Day 5: Mindfulness through photography

I had a "me too!" moment yesterday when I read an ABC News story about a new book on mindfulness through photography. Capturing Mindfulness is written by Sydney author, illustrator and public speaker Matthew Johnstone, who says buying a camera helped him to overcome years of depression. 

I went out and bought a camera, and in many ways I believe this camera saved my bacon. It was through this camera that I realised the whole concept and idea of being in the moment...Photography at the end of the day is really about stopping, it's really about seeing what's in front of us, it's really about stopping and focusing and it's about capturing that moment.

Me too! Well, in a way...Photography hasn't saved me from depression, but it has had the pleasing side effect of taking photos is that I take more notice of my surroundings. I see more. I actively look for things. My experience of my world is richer and I feel more connected to it. It gets me out of my head and into the world. Writing Gleeful contributes to this too, of course, since I need to take notice of life's little pleasures. 

Matthew Johnstone is also gets excited about being in industrial areas where there are rusty pipes and peeling paint, so we have that photographic obsession in common as well.  

I was meant to have them

I've had my eye on a pair of boots in an online shop and every now and then I check to see if they are on sale. This afternoon they were still at full price, significantly more than I would usually spend on shoes. Then five minutes after I checked, the store tweeted about their 20% off sale (I don't even follow them - it was a promoted tweet). I couldn't resist. Now they are mine. Hopefully we get a little more mild weather so I can wear them before autumn!

I'm 34

I was quite pleased today to learn that my fitness age is younger than my actual age - 34, rather than 41. That was my result when I said I exercise two to three times a week and go "all out", which I do at the gym. When I put in that I exercise at a lower level of intensity nearly every day, as I do when I walk to work, my fitness age is 38. Either way, younger than 41.    

It's a girl, three kinds of fish, sunset

 Funny little car on Puckle Street, Moonee Ponds

I'm still playing blog catch-up, but at least I'm only a few days behind now. Luke's sister had her third baby on Friday - a little girl after two boys. Yay! We visited on Saturday afternoon. So tiny and cute and not at all happy about being woken up to have a bath. Luke has an adorably funny picture of her reaction, which he will no doubt bring out for her 21st birthday.

Luke wore his Planet Terror t-shirt on Saturday, which was April 6.  When we were in the lift going up to the maternity ward I noticed the date at the bottom of the print. 

After we left the hospital, we visited Middle Brighton Beach. It was a warm, sunny day. Our Indian summer isn't quite over yet. 

 Brighton's famous bathing boxes

 They're a popular backdrop for wedding photos

Look at all these little fish!

There were thousands - probably tens of thousands - of them swimming in the shallows  around the Middle Brighton Pier, flashing silver in the sun. They were mesmerising. 

Jellyfish!

Starfish! 

This starfish is far more laid back than Sassy Starfish. 

 

The hazy city

The clouds rolled in, but it didn't rain where we were

After Brighton, we stopped in St Kilda, just before the sun set. It was a pearler. 

 

Puffy cloud on the horizon opposite the sun

We had dinner on Acland Street, and then gelato...well, had gelato; Luke didn't because his belly was full with the giant chicken parmagiana he had for dinner. I had the coconut meringue and the caramel popcorn flavoured gelato from 7 Apples (yes, it actually had bits of popccorn in it). The popcorn was OK and the coconut was pleasant. My heart/stomach still belongs to Fritz Gelato.  

Another coincidence, fireworks, ripe bananas

Another Pride and Prejudice-related coincidence happened today. Just before I started watching it this afternoon, someone I follow on Twitter tweeted that she was watching Pride and Prejudice ahead of the 200th anniversary of the book's publication tomorrow. I didn't know about the anniversary until I read her tweet. 

I'm three episodes in - about the point where Mr Darcy proposes to Elizabeth with the famous line, "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you" and she angrily rejects him. A swoon-worthy line, no doubt,  but I'm still not aware of any weakening of my knee joints. 

Luke and I watched the Australia Day fireworks while perched on a couch in front of our loungeroom window last night. Ka-BOOM! 

There are three over-ripe bananas in our fruit bowl. Today while browsing Pinterest I found a recipe for oatmeal cupcakes that calls for three ripe bananas - the riper the better. I think I'll make them tomorrow (only with blueberries not choc chips).

Second breakfast, old signs, under the bridge

Luke and I went to Yarraville in the inner west today. We had lunch (or, more accurately, second breakfast, which is becoming quite a habit for us) just near the Sun Theatre. The section of road in front of the cinema has been laid with pretend grass, which is dotted with colourful deck chairs and outdoor chairs and tables. I think every suburb should have a lawnstreet. 

After second breakfast, we wandered about with our cameras. There were quite a few old signs. 

 There are several signs here. It looks like it has been
 a chemist for many years

 Robur Tea maybe? 

 Engineering Patternmaker

Lots of engineers in Yarraville

Plumber and sewerage

Before heading home we stopped near the Westgate Bridge and went for a walk. As we walked under the bridge, I got Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers stuck in my head. 

(Bonus Australian flag for Australia Day)

  

This snake amuses me. It looks too cute

 Egret slouching in a shrub

 The Stony Creek Backwash walkway

 A cormorant resting on the skeleton of an old boat

The same cormorant followed us, apparently eager

 to pose for more photos

 Big Bird was here

 Very big ship on the way to the docks

 No, it didn't hit the bridge

Yet another coincidence

This morning I went to the video store (yes, we still hire movies) to borrow Pride and Prejudice, the BBC version with Colin Firth and that scene. I haven't seen it and decided I should after Luke's mother and sister waxed lyrical about it on Thursday night. Luke's mum all but swooned as she described Colin Firth emerging from the water in his wet shirt. Teehee.  I don't understand why women go weak at the knees over Colin Firth. I think he's an English ponce, so perhaps watching him in Pride and Prejudice will help me to understand.   

Anyway, the coincidence: the video store guy had a TV on the counter and there was a quiz show on. I didn't hear the quiz master ask the question, but the answer was....PRIDE AND PREJUDICE!!!