Asher Digs

 I have managed to sneak away for a few seconds while Asher has a bath. The day has been busy with a 10:00am appointment at the Jan Juc Caravan Park. Daniel and Bianca are scouting for vans or cabins near the beach. This park is in a bush setting on the side of a hill and the two spots available have there pros and cons.  We called into anaconda on the way back for the latest and greatest in snorkel gear. I drove Bianca and Daniel and Becca to the One Day winery for an afternoon with no kids. In the meantime we got Asher down to the beach for a one hour session of sand castling.  There is just enough time for an Asher bath before Mick and Anna arrive for a barbecue.

watching the Sunset

hello fingers

Telephone Books

Asher Digs

Asher makes the Tea

 We have a four day Asher show starting today and she is going to bed soon and will sleep for hours after swimming lessons then travel time then playtime and just now a two hour musical extravaganza called VIVO which I recommend for all the kids.  Now I have to quickly find a book before her bedtime.

Bedding Project

 We are half way thru the updated bedroom bedding bonanza here.  The Sleeping Duck 2 was unpacked and hauled into position before the rapid inflation was let loose.  The idea is to have more attractive bedding for guests. We have the views, we have the beach, now we have the beds.  There is still one bedroom to go but at least we don't have to get the box up any stairs.  We do have to get the double bed dismantled and out of it, before the new Sleeping Duck 3 can go in. This one has come with a Queen base. We just cleared the space near the front door and Sleeping Duck 3 has cluttered the area.  By the time we are done there will only be queen sized, sleeping duck beds in three rooms with new upgraded sheet and pillow slip sets.

mattress in a roll

Sleeping Duck 3 with base 

Video Village No 203

 We got up with some storms this morning and they seem to be off and on so far. So it is a good day to work on the video backlog. We are also expecting another mattress some time today, that will be Sleeping Duck 3. We just got Sleeping Duck 2 up the stairs this week, thanks to Mitchell and Gus so that is another indoor job for today and just in time for the long weekend visitors.

Beach Drink

We have visitors for a long weekend coming up and high pressure window cleaning is required not to mention some pavement washing as well. Then there is the last minute garden tidy up as well as a few meetings online with the Canadians. After all that, it was possible for a short stroll and sit down on our beach. There is still a lot of dried grass but the water temperature is OK however you can't stay in for to long. There was a snorkeler who said she did not see a single fish. This may backup my theory that the grass helps hide fish and if it's ripped away there might not be as many fish around.  It's early days for this Summer.

Asher makes a visit

Dainty garden gloves

Sunset Colour

Ahh the serenity

Among Others

 "Maps are Brill."  What can I say, the teenager in this book loves maps, loves books and reads science fiction.  I am not sure about when she sees fairies but we have fairy gardens here, so who cares. This book is written as a diary which is a bit weird.  She travels by public transport, so needs a map in her bag at all times.  Also needs two or three books in her bag as well and must know where the libraries are to get more books.   I would guess that at least 100 other books are mentioned in this book, a lot of which I already have. I have ordered one or two that got particularly good mentions.

Trim Trim Trimminy

 We got out the new trimmer and got it going but I will write down the procedure so I wont forget.

1. engage trigger catch
2. turn on switch
3. set throttle on
4. pump three of four times 
5. set throttle off
6. pull rip cord
7. pull rip cord again
8. pull rip cord not as hard (success)
9. disengage trigger catch
10. put on safety glasses
11. trim weeds

The big tip is to release some cutting line immediately before doing anything else, which I did not do. This would have moved the existing hardened bend in the cutting cord away from the eyelet holes.  Who knows how long the cord was sitting in that position on the wall of the shop before we came along. So as soon as I tried the very first piece of grass, both the cutting ends broke away at the brittle bends and the whole assembly had to be undone and rewound to get some cord out of it. Fortunately the bump action to release more cord worked ok for the rest of the job.  It is a more powerful unit and can tend to run away if the trigger is pressed too hard.  The new mower was also given its first go and seems a lot quieter than the old one.  I wonder if James has tried the old one yet.

cut & trim

water feature maintenance

Phone Taming

 I had another go at Android phone taming today with good success.  I can play music now despite all the copied tunes being .wma (windows media audio) from the old windows phone. I had to install a different music player which worked like a treat. As for the emails, I set up a POP3 (Post Office Protocol) type of account in G Mail,  as the Outlook method wanted to be more secure therefore more finicky.  So in the end I can now use Google to go to my Optus mail server and get my email and instead of displaying it via Outlook, I can access via Google Mail. Phew!  Not that I will be paying it too much attention, away from my desk.

Mitchell Makes Mattress Move

 Got a call from cousin Mitchell about being in the area eg just passing so thought I might stop by.  And a good idea it was too.  Gave him and Gus the tour of the house and the garden areas, as well as the obligatory walk down to the beach, to show off our sandy stretch.  Of course two strapping teenagers have to pay their way by lifting that 60kg mattress up  the stairs into the top bedroom for us. It had been sitting down by the front door for weeks.  Now we can get that room back into shape.

Gus & Mitchell Muscle that box

the Clifton view

Sideways Estelle

Lots of situations where teams have been going about there business in bubbles of safety. Well Estelle just likes bubbles.  I have made it back to a proper keyboard and a large screen.  I guess the phone could be used for emergency Blog posting, a daily update that just has to go up.  Estelle is getting stronger in the legs and not to forget the fingers which will really grab hold if you let her.

Well Estelle - I look much better on an angle

Bubble Time

Phone Post

 This must be the smallest keyboard ever. Now I can't see what I am typing. What else except play with this while waiting for the dentist.

Ah now I can see it is has turned vertical. Easy.

Delivery of Mowers

 We had an outing to a lawnmower shop. Anything counts as an outing these days, although we did have a sit down at Orchid & Co which is a cafe with focaccia type lunches in a good location near the Geelong botanic gardens.  As for the mowers, we decided against the almost truck like sit on variety, so we settled for an almost identical one similar to our old trusty Masport with Briggs and Stratton engine.  We also got a new trimmer of the petrol driven kind as well and with a two sided cutting motion. The old mower has had a maintenance job done on it so should last another 20 yar.   Will the lawn look any better?

this is the kind of mower that buggered up my elbow

Orchid & Co

Short Ride

The Sun has come back so I have done another short ride as an arm tester.  I have worked out if I can change the grip then it feels different in the elbow, that goes the same for hands on steering wheel, or lawn mower or bicycle handle bars. I stopped off to try the samsung phone's camera. I thought I switched it to 16:9 format but the below photo looks like 4:3.   Our robot vacuum cleaner has stopped as it does not seem smart enough to be controlled from two phones.  This will be fixable.  I have turned on Google Cloud backup for everything on the phone. I wonder how long it will take to use up my free 15Gb of space.

First photo - low tide coast

The Great Forest

 This is one of those coffee table books with a message.  Being an ex Board of Works person I can relate to the parts in this book that refer to the closed catchments which kept all the log cutters out.  It was a regular fight every few years, Why can't we get in there to chop those trees down?  I worked on the MMBW submissions to Government using many different maps. Then there was the rogaining events covering this area. I remember toiling thru absolute jungle in some places like King Parrot Creek.  I would say about half of the 100 rogaines I did would have covered the Central Highlands.

Geology map I did of Mullum Mullum creek

Mail Phone

The pressure is on to have the latest and greatest phone which will allow displaying of the linked double zap certificate in the contact tracing app.  My old phone was being phased out so this new one will get me on aeroplanes and thru doorways.  But do you think I can get my emails to work on it. I can logon to the optus web page to see the emails that way no problem, but the password to directly fetch them from the optus server is most likely different. The last time I used it was setting up the old phone 6 yar ago. I must have it written down here somewhere. I have made a phone call though.

My Bollard is stuck

 When the wind gets up anything can end up on the beach. There was a break in the rain so I did a short beach walk to see what's what.  At the second groyne and almost out as far as you can get I spied a bollard that was driven among the rocks. The spray was significant and the rocks slippery but I went out there and got it unwedged.  Just getting it back to the sand was enough trouble.  I placed it behind a bush for next time as it was starting to get heavy and my elbow was complaining about all the effort. Maybe it could direct traffic around our umbrella.

Red Pencil

Yes We have no bananas

 We are not currently in official lockdown but ...  I went to the supermarket and we have always had shortages of late which everyone has been putting up with. There is no panic buying or hoarding of items however the fruit and veg was really depleted and for the first time there were no bananas. It was a shopping trip during the afternoon on a Saturday so a better strategy would be earlier in the morning and mid week. We haven't been too fussed before now but someone else got the last banana.  Roll on 80%.  We need more people in QLD bending more bananas!

I used to watch these guys all the time
Bingo Drooper Snork and Fleegle

                                                             

Garden Update No 589

Debbie has been mulling over the state of the Japanese maple .  There are more shoots coming out now giving it a bit of colour but it is lagging way behind where it should be.  So we have moved it about three metres from under its roofy cover to a spot where it should get a bit more Sun.  The weather has closed in here this afternoon. For the last few days the rain has come in overnight especially last night's mega thunderstorm over the You Yangs. Our strawberry plants are going OK after they were moved at the start of Winter. I can see large clumps of strawberries on numerous plants.

Caribbean

 This is one of those James  A Michener time line tales where you start at the beginning and by the time you have reached the end of the book, a thousand years has passed. Each chapter is it's own story and if he can, he will link it to the next one by some ancestor or other in the next time period.  There is some history to it but mostly it's a fictional tale like any other.  I have already placed it in the box for the second hand shop.  I have read one other of these and it may have been South Pacific which is closer to our patch and the one he got the Pulitzer prize for.

Drysdale Riding

 I did two 5km rides today as I went into Drysdale but what goes in must come back.  The elbow man says one 5km ride every few days but this seemed to workout OK. I took quite a lot of video the other day so it  needs to be seen. Three year olds can be characters.  NO WAY. What's going on PA? Good secretary's are hard to find.

                                                                      Memory Game

                                                                      Working for a Living

                                                               Work Work Work

Working for a Living

A low temperature sunny day means I can still  do a bit of a beach walk although the easterly breeze and a low tide make it tricky. I haven't got the ocean clean up kit out yet as it is looking quite good at the moment. I disturbed a ray in the shallows but he took off in a cloud of sand. Being Asher's actual birthday today I have been working on the videos as well. There are a few more but these are a calm opening of presents.

Asher takes the Cake

 We combined a pre birthday Asher visit and a skin check appointment into the one trip but it was a nine to five day.  I think we may have gone with slightly too many presents but who cares. There was the garden tools from the great grandma's and grandpa's and then the balloon set and then the fishnchips set and then the Work set and finally the memory game and then the chocolate crackle cakes.   Debbie made about 50 of these and the mixture would have allowed for 300.  Your only 3 once. I'll work on some videos tomorrow.

birthday baby cino

What a crackle

Estelle and the Bubbles

It's green bin day so the lawns have had another cut and for some reason they really needed it this time. I also cleaned up about 10 to 15 crazy lemons that the possums have been working on for a few weeks.  Last minute Asher shopping has been completed and I have drawn a birthday card to match yesterdays.  Also got the video camera unloaded with some Live Estelle in her own backyard.  

Sliding Asher Running Water

 I had forgotten how much you can put into 36 hours. This morning BrimBank was brimming with cars and car spaces were scarce.  But there is so much room you can spread out on a patch of grass with no one breathing germs.  The very small playground was busy and Asher used the slide 50 times. We had coffee and birthday cake from the Bianca's thermomix not to forget the rest of the cooking, meatballs and quiche. Down below at the ford it was a busy crossing, with many bicycles and quite a few wet feet, including Nanna's and Asher's.  Our last stop was back at Tim and Julie's for sausage rolls, sandwiches and scones. Also got a beach cleanup kit and a Forest book for a birthday bonus.

Strawberry Hand

Estelle chews thru

The two bottom teeth coming thru in Estelle's mouth mean that everything will get a good gnawing if you get to close.  The refrigerated chews seem to be the best options but anything with a rough surface will do. For our two days of care making we started at GrandMa/GrandPa's, where numerous presents were picked up and one haircut delivered.  Onto Nanna's for a delivery of food and a change of clocks and finally our last care stop for baby sitting with Estelle and some traditional fish n chips which we have not had this year. Tomorrow we can do it all again.

Swimming Not

Can be distracting with the robot cleaner buzzing away just in the back ground.  I have had to free it from a stuck position but it sends an SOS if needed. Bad Robot. Did another quick sweep of the beach just to get outside but also went in for a bit of wading not swimming.  The wind has sprung up heavily during the evenings of late, so a lot of grass has been stirred up making the water murky.  I picked the clearest spot although the black stuff was mostly dirt rather than grass.  I was squishing a few sponges and identified from the trusty taxonomy toolkit that the below sponge is a Globosus Carter identified in 1886.

underwater attached

the washed up version

5km ride

 No wind and a bit of Sun so I tried the 5km ride this morning and my elbow passed the test. However there were no real hills in it but its a start.  Hardly seems worth getting into the gear and trundling around my extended block a few times.  Not the same at the Paris-Roubaix at the weekend. Six hours of rain, cobblestones and mud, now that is a ride.  At one stage there was a guy who went head first into a ditch and I am sure he submerged but the camera sped on leaving him to wallow.

Colbrelli

Foundation

 I mentioned previously about Asimov and his original SciFi book series Foundation. This is the only entire series to receive the Hugo award for each of the five volumes.  He has come up again on Apple TV.  I have seen some hints about this Epic on Google TV. We bought the Google gismo a year ago, as it updates all the streaming channels,  particularly the Disney + we were after but it also allows us to see Apple TV without an Apple device.   I have read a write up of the first episode of Foundation last week and I quote 'This will do for Apple what Game of Thrones did for HBO'.  That is a big statement.  The subscription is $50 per year. After Netflix, Foxtel, GCN+ and Disney+ why not add another one?   There are times lately when we have forgotten where a particular show we were following, is located.

PS We did have a look a Amazon TV for a one month trial.

new adaption

original books