Thunder and rainbows and faux Mondays

A little rainbow this afternoon

Cold weather has finally arrived in Melbourne. I'm not thrilled about the cold, but I was a little thrilled by the thunder clap that greeted me when I left for work this morning (thrilled and a tiny bit scared). I quickly decided to take the bus to the tram stop (which was probably a good idea anyway because my ankle was sore from too much walking yesterday). 

I was also thrilled by this rainbow and another bigger one that appeared not long after.  

I kept thinking today was Monday because of the public holiday yesterday, but it's not! Wooh! Tomorrow is the last day of my working week already. 

Rainbow, bark in the park

I talking to my boss in his office this afternoon and had to interrupt myself to point out the rainbow.  The end of it near the Eureka Tower was so vibrant. 

This photo doesn't do it justice

It was still there about 20 minutes later when I was ready to go home. I was on my way out via the kitchen because I wanted to take a photo of the rainbow out the other side of the building and, as I approached, a partner said to me, "Have you seen the rainbow?" which made me smile because some grown ups with serious jobs are too restrained to appreciate rainbows. (I liked him before he said that though.)

The kitchen window view (with bonus extra rainbow)

I managed to avoid the rain when I was out and about this morning (I had an appointment with the doctor who will treat the abnormal veiny thing in my scone  - next Wednesday!), but when I got off the tram on my way home it started to pelt down. I hid behind a tree in the park. It had interesting bark. 

I got to see the images of my skull/brain from my recent angiogram at my appointment today. It was fascinating, a little bit scary but also funny because in one shot from above my eyeballs looked like a pair of very prominent golf balls. I wanted to take a photo of it (there's an odd selfie) but restrained myself. 

Books, bubble wrap, buildings

A rainbow yesterday

Now that I've given up shopping for shoes and clothes - and I haven't been shopping online much at all - I miss the little thrill of parcels showing up on my desk at work every week or two. I did buy some books online recently though, and they showed up yesterday. Yay! 

I bought Oliver Jeffers' A Child of Books (a kids' book) and The Well of Being, a picture book for adults described as "an enchanting illustrated enquiry into the pursuit of happiness, and what it means to be radically alive in our daily moments". I haven't read either yet. 

I have stomped all over the bubble wrap with giant bubbles that the books were wrapped in however.  

I bought two more books today (Hannah Kent's new one, The Good People, and Clementine Ford's Fight Like a Girl) so I have another parcel (and more bubble wrap) to look forward to next week.  

I've often wondered about the history of the magnificently grand but faded building occupied by JB Hi-Fi on Chapel Street and now I know, thanks to someone I follow on Instagram who linked to a blog post about it. It was originally the Prahran Arcade, which housed 30 shops, Turkish baths, billiard rooms and an OYSTER SALOON.  I don't eat oysters (gak!) but if I did I would want to eat them at a saloon. 

After two very cold days (by Melbourne in October standards), we are set for a couple of days of  mid-20s temperatures. Hooray! 

Rainbow, flowers, sausages, book day

This rainbow was almost full, with one end (above) visible out of the window in Nick's office and the other end out of my boss's window, but it faded out in the middle. Nick (a first year lawyer) actually came to ask me me if I'd seen the rainbow, which I appreciated. This was taken yesterday when the wintry weather struck. 

I  took another photo of these purple flowers just because they are so pretty. I bought the bouquet home with me after work today so I could enjoy them on the weekend, although they are started to droop a little.

We had Sausage Thursday (Thausage Thursday?) this week. It's firmly entrenched as my favourite meal (although I think I might like it even more with corned beef instead of snags).  

I have very little planned this weekend, which pleases me. I'm thinking of having another couch/book/tea day tomorrow because I've been feeling very tired and a bit ordinary this week (not that I need an excuse).  

Rainbow, no alarm, tea habit

Sunset rainbow through my office window

Today was another of those cold, gloomy winter days where we didn't see the sun until it was setting. It made a brief appearance, gave us a rainbow and was gone. 

I thought I had an appointment tomorrow morning, but I don't, which means I don't need to set my alarm. Love that. It's been hard to get out of bed this week so I'm especially pleased I can emerge from my bed at my leisure. 

I've never been much of a tea or coffee drinker (not a coffee drinker at all actually), but lately I seem to have developed a (green) tea habit. It started because I was cold at work and wanted something to warm me up, but now I actually want to drink it for its own sake. I look forward to having a nice, hot cuppa.  Maybe I'll go off it in when winter's over, but for now I'm enjoying it.  

Return of Luke, you never know unless you ask, more crunch

Footpath rainbow (from refracted sunlight)

Luke is home! He got back last Tuesday night.  He had lots of photos, some presents for me (including a glass octopus) and a beard.  I quite like him with face fuzz, but it prickles me when we kiss. He shaved it off before going back to work anyway. 


Later starts

You might have got the impression that I'm not a morning person because I stay in bed as late as possible on work days and I'm always in a rush to get to work. You would be right, but that might be about to change. No, I'm not becoming a morning person - I'm starting work an hour later!  My working hours are now 10.00 am to 6.15 pm. THIS MEANS I DON'T NEED TO GET UP UNTIL AT LEAST 8.20. EIGHT-TWENTY!

I'm hoping the later start will have me getting up early enough to eat my breakfast at home, getting ready at a leisurely pace and resuming my habit of walking to work...but we shall see.  

I didn't even have to ask for the later start. I had thought about it earlier this year, but discounted it because I didn't think it would win support, but last week my boss suggested it to the other secretary and me. (She's starting earlier and finishing earlier so there will be a secretary on deck from 8.00 am to 6.15 pm.) I guess it just goes to show you never know unless you ask, eh? 


Added crunch

There's a new variety of gluten-free Weetbix on the supermarket shelves and it's tasty. I only found out when I opened the box I bought yesterday and it looked different. I thought I'd bought a gluteny variety by mistake, but not, it's just got rice puffs and sunflower seeds added for a pleasing bit of crunch. 

Beautiful Melbourne, stormy, distracted

Here's some beautiful videos that have been posted by a couple of my Twitter friends. 

The first is a timelapse video of inner Melbourne. 

The second is a timelapse of storms shot near Melbourne. Awesome cloudage! 

Chasing the storm from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo.

Speaking of storms, we had a very brief storm this afternoon. There was rain, hail and a few thunderclaps. It only lasted about five minutes and then the clouds cleared and the sun came out again.  Actually, the rain lasted a bit longer. I was in the boardroom at work and out one window there was sunshine and rain, but out the other window it didn't appear to be raining at all! It was weird. 

During the meeting I was distracted by a small segment of rainbow that I could just see out the window and also a little slice of the sun-sparkly Yarra reflecting off a glassy building on the south bank of the river. Fortunately the meeting didn't require much input from me. 

Another find via Twitter - what Dr Seuss books would be called if they were titled according to their subtexts. 

NB For those of you who read Gleeful via email, I noticed the other day the videos don't appear. If you want to see the videos, click on the title of the blog post, which is a link to the blog itself. 

Test run, yum, mum

Cute, no?

I took my little sewing machine for a test run today. I was pleased I actually remembered how to thread the cotton and the other basic stuff, so I'm not an absolute beginner. I started off sewing a few lines of straight stitch and zig zag on scrap material, then moved on to the project that prompted me to buy the machine: a corsety-belt using some wide, black trim I found at Clegs fabric store. It's decorated with horizontal rows of fake leather, satin ribbon and fancy stitching. I sewed the raw ends with the machine, then hand-sewed a row of D-rings on each end so the belt can be laced up with ribbon.  I didn't have enough D-rings to complete the belt, so I'll show you when it's done.

I cooked corned beef for dinner tonight. Yum. And there's leftovers for tomorrow night. I cooked dumplings again too. I froze half of the last batch of dough I made last week and tonight I thawed it and cooked them in the pot with the corned beef. 

I had a very domesticated day today. As well as the sewing and cooking, I cleaned, did the grocery shopping and even some ironing (which I do maybe three times a year). It was a good day to stay in.

I called my mum for Mother's Day tonight and had a long chat.  

I took this partial rainbow photo from my 

office during the week

 Brightly decorated cars are the traditional way

 of celebrating Buddha's birthday. 

Spotted on Collins Street yesterday

What remains of the Bill & Ted-inspired sign

 I mentioned last Sunday

Clunes glee

My visit to Clunes yesterday for the Booktown Festival was chock-full of glee. So many books, so many old signs, so many grand gold-rush era buildings, so much...rusticity. (I think I made that word up.)

We made a quick stop in Ballarat on the way to see Lake Wendouree with water in it again. The last time I was there (on my Wagons West Birthday Extravaganza in July 2009) it was empty, and had been for several years because of the drought. It was quite a sorry sight. But thanks to the wonders of water pumps and the end of the drought, Lake Wendouree is a proper lake again, complete with ducks. 

This was a fluke photo. I like to think it was smiling for 

the camera. I can't help chuckling when I look at this. 

It was rather chilly (nothing new for Ballarat) and we had places to go and books to look at, so we took a few photos and then set off for Clunes. I spotted this excellent old two-in-one sign from the moving car, but  managed to get a quick shot when we stopped briefly at a roundabout.

The top line says Carriers Arms Hotel and below that 

Melbourne Bitter, but you can see remnants 

of another old sign beneath 

The first thing that caught my eye in Clunes was another old sign. 

Power Bros

A closer view...

From what I can make out in the painted over bit at the bottom, I'm fairly sure it's a sign advertising Velvet Soap. I've posted a photo of a quite well preserved sign like this that I took  in Collingwood before, but I can't find where exactly.

And then to the books...pretty much every building in the centre of Clunes that was open and wasn't selling food had tables loaded with books and old magazines on every topic. Even one of the old garages had been turned into a makeshift bookshop - it seemed fitting to browse its tables of military and aviation books with the smell of grease tickling your olfactory. 

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I actually tired of browsing books fairly quickly. I did find some books I wanted to buy (kids books, mostly), but of course everything I liked was rare and priced at more than I was willing to pay (and there were so many people and I'm not patient in crowds). Even so, I did enjoy the wafts of old book smell and reading inscriptions in old-fashioned cursive in the front of books that had been given as gifts. 

The only thing I bought (apart from lunch) was a jar of homemade fig jam, which I haven't had since I was a kid and my aunt made some. Normally I have a fold up shopping bag in my handbag when I go out to avoid accumulating bags, but I didn't take one yesterday. The shop owner asked if I wanted a bag for my jam and I had to say yes, thinking he'd give me a plastic one. But then he pulled this out of a drawer:

What a great way to re-use old newspapers. It was reinforced with light cardboard around the top to keep the jute handles from tearing the paper and had cardboard on the inside bottom, but even so, it was still surprisingly sturdy. At one stage I had my heavy jar of jam and a can of drink in it and it was well up to the task.

But back to the jam...I opened it earlier today and felt a little ripple of nostalgia when I saw it had a disc of wax in the top to keep the jar airtight - just like my mum used to make when I was a kid. Oh, and the jam is yummy. Figs are underrated, I think. I had a salad a little while back with roasted figs in it and they were delicious. 

I think the reason I lost interest in looking at all the books was because I was itching to explore the town and take photos, which was always part of the attraction for me. And I wasn't disappointed. If you look up 'rustic' in the dictionary, there will be a picture of Clunes. Like many other Victorian towns, it has several grand civic buildings erected during the boom years of the gold rush, but also plenty of more modest buildings that have seen better days.  

The wide main street (with hay bale maze for the kiddies)

Not sure what the old signs say, but I like it. 

Pegasus atop Central Garage. This is an old sign in itself

 - the winged horse symbol for Mobil Oil.

The back of the garage

A side window of the garage-cum-bookshop. 

I only noticed when I uploaded this photo 

that there's a fragment of old sign on it

I'm not sure how old/authentic some of the old shop signs are, but I know the Boot Palace dates back to at least 1925 because we saw an old photo of the street in one of the shops.

The Boot Palace front window. I love these old 

signs painted on glass

 Leonard Paperhanger and House Decoration

Stupid car ruining my photo

The people from Dumbo Feather had set up an awesome retro caravan out the front of the town hall, which I thought quite a coincidence given I only discovered the existence of the magazine last Sunday. 

Nearby was a fantastically gaudy 'Grand Concert Street Organ' playing songs almost guaranteed to become earworms, like the Mickey Mouse Club theme and the Aeroplane Jelly jingle.  Aaaargh! 

What I liked the most were the statues of two women on pedestals either side of the organ pipes. They're holding real bells which they 'tinged' at appropriate points in the songs. Look at her expression! And her not very life-like bosom! Haha.  

Holy crap! I'm not dreaming! I really am 

half-naked in public dinging a bell!  

With 'I like Aeroplane Jelleeee' ringing in our ears we ventured into the town hall which was nice and warm and - who'da thought? - full of books. I spied a woman browsing the books with a bag from The Strand bookshop in New York over her shoulder. I went there when I was in New York and bought myself a similar book bag. I was going to comment on hers, but didn't because I'm shy sometimes.  If only I'd taken mine with me...

The ceiling of the Town Hall

Before heading home we visited the Clunes cemetery to take some photos (thank you www.clunes.org for alerting me to its location). Did you know there's actually a word for people who um...like cemeteries? Taphophiles. Yep, I have taphophilia.

I don't just take photos though - I do read the headstones and sometimes the epitaphs are quite lovely, like this one for Peter and Mary Kempson, a husband and wife who were both born in Birmingham and died two days apart in 1894 at the age of 70. Their epitaph reads in part: 

Then we hit the road back to Melbourne.  

Off in the distance is a hill which has one little tree right on top. It's called Cattle Station Hill, but it was being grazed by a flock of sheep. 

It rained a little and there was a partial rainbow when the sun broke through a gap in the clouds. 

My Saturday in photos

The fog still lingered over the city when Luke and I walked along the river this morning. I took a photo of ducks (surprise!). It's so cute the way they tuck their beaks into their feathers to sleep. 

There was a rainbow in the spray from the Hochgurtel Fountain in the Carlton Gardens.

Here's a close up. 

We went to the Finders Keepers Market at the Royal Exhibition Building, although the opportunity to photograph the building's beautiful interior was the biggest drawcard. The market only took up one end of the building, with the rest of it screened off. But there were gaps  where the screens joined so we squeezed through and snapped away. It's not that often you get  the chance to take photos inside the Royal Exhibition  Building without hordes of people getting in the way. 

Click here for more pics

Luke spotted an old sign on a building opposite the Exhibition Building.

Bantown House? 

We popped into the Botanic Gardens on our way home. The Ornamental Lake is covered in a thick carpet of algae. 

It's a swanvoy

I took more photos of ducks (and the algae).

The ducks were funny.  I saw a gap in the algae where the surface of the water was disturbed. 'Ooh, there's something in the water over there!' I said to Luke, just as a duck popped up in the gap. 

We saw swans making a love heart. Unfortunately they were rather inconsiderate swans and didn't hold the pose for more than a nanosecond, so my photo is fuzzy. 

We took some more photos and then headed for home. 

An ending and a beginning

I started my new job today. Of course I was sad to come to the end of my three-week staycation (I'm so not one of those people who says they'd get bored if they didn't work), but my first day went well and I'm feeling very positive about my decision to take the job (not that I've had any doubts). 

Most of my day was spent in training and I actually managed to stay alert, despite getting up much earlier than I have for three weeks.  Thankfully I already know how to use the document management system, which makes the learning curve a little easier to negotiate. 

I made it to my desk in the afternoon and was delighted to discover I can see the State Library  - one of my favourite places - from my desk.

But most importantly, everyone was very friendly and welcoming. The managing partner (the big boss) is on my floor and he called out goodbye to me as I was leaving - by name. I was pretty impressed with that.  It's a much smaller firm - about 200 in the Melbourne office, compared to more than 700 in my old job.  I think I'm going to like it there. 

Other good bits: 

• They have a corporate casual dress code so I don't have to wear suits. I don't feel disappointed about by their once-a-month casual clothes day now (rather than every Friday). 
• The IT trainer gave me a chocolate frog. Of course I liked her instantly. 
• I get to walk through the heart of the city and some of my favourite laneways on way to and from work again. I've missed being in the thick of it. It's a few blocks further than my old job, but that's OK. More exercise!
• I saw a rainbow over the top of the Rialto Buildings on my way to work, but I didn't stop to take a picture because I wanted to make sure I arrived on time (I was waaaay early).

Rainbow

After the storm this evening