Gym Session

 The gym here is quite well equipped and I am still mostly using the machines in particular the bike machine. Since my elbow has started coming good again after a year of issues I am starting to add weight lifting to the routine.  There are no bars here but there are dumbells the largest of which are 10kg each. Now I am not sure who they are expecting in this retirement village to lift 20kgs even from waist to shoulder.  At home I can now do 25 repetitions of a 7kg weight from waist to overhead. Here I struggled to do 10 with a 10kg weight.  All in good time I guess. We also have a proper bar where I have been working it without weights but if I can do a 10kg handweight overhead then I can add a few kilos. I guess that is called raising the bar.

Williamstown Sleepover

 Yes Estelle has had her first adventure without the parents looking over her shoulder. It didn't help that the breaker on the hot water had tripped while we were away and also that the cooktop refused to turn on but we did get to walk the parkland and get pizzas instead. I got to sleep on the couch so that Estelle could use the main bed. It was my first go on the fold out bed. Such adventures and the sleeping is not too bad for thin springs. If anyone wants to comment on what this steel framework might be that we found in the backyard. It just appeared since last week.

No Swim

 Will there be another swim that is the question? It was calm enough and warm enough this morning. I saw our neighbour Kerry with his SUP board and that only happens if it's calm. Although he has lost his edge a bit. Anyway I went across with snorkel and camera but a gust comes in and a warm Northerly with it and everything is chop chop choppy.  I walked it instead without a rubbish bag but it looks clear enough. Some of the saltbush can spread and takehold quickly and when the tide is up the saltbush is in the water.

What do you call a chicken with a broken leg who could not get to the other side?

-

-

-

A lame joke

This Bogong hitched a ride from Williamstown

SaltBush City Limits

The Birds

 This is the only Daphne Du Maurier story I have read. She has a few famous books so maybe I should keep a lookout for them.  It was written in 1952 and is right up there with any episode of the Twilight Zone.  Alfred Hitchcock was impressed, as he a made it a film in 1963. It is a good old fashioned horror story about birds on the attack.  I had a few of those problems myself when a few years back, I crashed off the bike and hit the guttering due to diving swoopers. The problem with this story, is that it seems unfinished. It's the same with the film, birds are dive bombing in the thousands but there is no real explanation and then that is the end of the yarn. 

Throws Session No 8

 There was a gap in the clouds and the wind had dropped for the first time in three days so I went across for a shot putting session which must be at least a month since the last effort. I need to get some consistency if I am going to get another metre. As i seem to be stuck around that 9 metre mark and it would be good to get to double figures. I did the session using runners which I think might be the first time. It is a very physical thing and sweaty. I lasted maybe 30 minutes for perhaps 20 throws with two five minute jogs to break it up. I was done after that but you still have to carry that weight a long way back.

FIGJAM

Yes a few footballers have been known by this moniker over the years but this time it's the neighbours who are feeding us again. It seems possums love figs, so great lengths are needed to keep them out, like building a complete enclosure, with door, to envelope the tree.  It worked so well there is now a bumper crop but then what do you do. Figjam. We also got a stack of whole figs which I do not think I have seen before. As a kid my father would eat dried figs and I never could try them and that idea stuck. However the undried variety were sweet enough but the texture is hard to describe. Also the jam has all the skin left in the cookpot so I have been feeling around inside the jar to get the peel out. Feel I'm Good Just Ask Me.

Golden Rendezvous

 I was looking for some reading and came across an old fave being Alistair Maclean. Back last century everything he wrote was made into film, as the go to action author.  Richard Harris starred in this one in 1977. I can't remember if  I saw it.  The technology back then was a big part which you would laugh at now like looking for the hidden radio because the shipboard one has been smashed. The idea that a cruise ship can carry cargo in massive holds while passengers stroll about the decks seems a stretch. Think what is onboard cruise ships today. Nevertheless if you get passed the time stamp it is still worth a read.