Extreme Disappointment And The Berwick Market

My footy team suffered only its second loss for the season yesterday and unfortunately, it was the Grand Final. Trish is happy because it was her team that were the underdogs but got up to win. My team squandered many opportunities to kick goals while Hawthorn seemed to score a goal every time they went forward. They were very accurate in front of goal too.

I caught up with three of my nephews, Marcus, Paul and Beau at the footy too. They had arrived at the ground at 4 am to get good seats on a walk up basis. My pre booked seat was just great!

This morning it was to the local market for a look around. It filled in an hour or so and got us out into the fresh air. It was quite busy down there. Tomorrow (Monday) I am catching up with my brother and Kate, Arj and the kids are coming to see him too. I am looking forward to seeing him again. I then plan to spend Monday night at Kim's and she will drop me off at Tullamarine airport for my flight back to the Sunshine Coast first thing Tuesday morning.

My next post will be from the Sunshine Coast!

AFL Grand Final Day and a Good Laugh!

At last the 2008 Grand Final has come and I am just about ready to head into the M.C.G. along with about 100,000 others. My team Geelong plays Trish's team Hawthorn.

The week has been spent catching up with others, and enjoying a couple of 'family' based activities. It was great to eventually get to our favorite Malaysian Restaurant along with our two daughters Kate and Kim and grandaughter Charli. She really loves her rice does Charli and had three bowls of the stuff.

We also caught up with Eddie and Patsy too. Eddie is recovering from the loss of a kidney and is well on the road to recovery.

I fly home on Tuesday while Trish follows a couple of weeks later.

I have edited the joke below to make it more child friendly. I think you will still get a good laugh out of it!

THE 6 BEST SMART ANSWERS OF 2007

SMART ANSWER 6

It was mealtime during a flight on a British Airways plane: "Would you like dinner?" the flight attendant asked the man seated in the front row.
"What are my choices?" the man asked.
"Yes or no," she replied.


SMART ANSWER 5


A flight attendant was stationed at the departure gate to check tickets. As a man approached, she extended her hand for the ticket and he opened his trench coat and flashed her. Without blinking an eyelid she said, "Sir, I need to see your ticket not your stub."


SMART ANSWER 4


A lady was picking through the frozen turkeys at a branch of Sainsbury's store but she couldn't find one big enough for her family. She asked a passing assistant, "Do these turkeys get any bigger?"
The assistant replied, "I'm afraid not, they're dead."


SMART ANSWER 3


The policeman got out of his car and the boy racer he stopped for speeding, rolled down his window.
"I've been waiting for you all day," the bobby said.
The kid replied, "Yes, well I got here as fast as I could."
When the policeman finally stopped laughing, he sent the kid on his way without a ticket.


SMART ANSWER 2

A lorry driver was driving along on a country road. A sign came up that read "Low Bridge Ahead." Before he realised it, the bridge was directly ahead and he got stuck under it. Cars are backed up for miles. Finally, a police car comes up.
The policeman got out of his car and walked to the lorry's cab and said to the driver "Got stuck, he?" The lorry driver said, "No, I was delivering this bridge and ran out of petrol!"


SMART ANSWER OF THE YEAR 2007

A teacher at a polytechnic college reminded her pupils of tomorrow's final exam.
Now listen to me, I won't tolerate any excuses for you not being here tomorrow. I might consider a nuclear attack or a serious personal injury, illness, or a death in your immediate family, but that's it, no other excuses whatsoever!"
A smart-a….. guy at the back of the room raised his hand and asked, "What would happen if I came in tomorrow suffering from complete and utter sexual exhaustion?"
The entire class was reduced to laughter and sniggering. When silence was restored, the teacher smiled knowingly at the student, shook her head and sweetly said, "Well, I suppose you'd have to write the exam with your other hand."

Peanuts Anyone?

A tour bus driver is driving with a bus load of seniors down a highway when he is tapped on his shoulder by a little old lady.

She offers him a handful of peanuts, which he gratefully munches up.

After about 15 minutes, she taps him on his shoulder again and she hands him another handful of peanuts.

She repeats this gesture about five more times.

When she is about to hand him another batch again he asks the little old lady, 'Why don't you eat the peanuts yourself?'.

'We can't chew them because we've no teeth', she replied.

The puzzled driver asks, 'Why do you buy them then?'

The old lady replied, 'We just love the chocolate around them.'

Both of these drawings are meant to be 'animated .gifs'. That means they should move. The little old man on the computer to the right is also an 'animated .gif' and I know he moves when you view this page in Firefox. The man doesn't seem to move when you look at this page using Internet Explorer. These are just some of the vagaries of the internet and using different web browsers.

Internet Experts tell us that Firefox is a much safer internet browser to use than Internet Explorer, though they do concede Internet Explorer is getting better each time they release an update. Internet Explorer seems to add features that Firefox users have been enjoying for quite some time each time there is a product update!

(Edit: I wrote this bit about 1 hour later) I have redone both animated.gifs and uploaded them to a separate internet site. I then set 'links' so my blog page links to the pictures from the other website. On my computer both pictures now should 'move' whether you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer (IE)! So if you click on the animated gif for a larger view, you are taken to the site where I have uploaded the original picture.

I still can't get the old man at the computer to move in IE though!

Footy, Vietnamese, and Down To Drouin

The headline summarises exactly what has happened since my last post. Both my footy team and Trish's team will fight out this year's AFL Premiership. My team, Geelong, had a dogged 29 point win over a determined Western Bulldogs while Trish's team had a straight forward 54 point win over St Kilda. Geelong and Hawthorn have been the two strongest teams in 2008 and it is fitting they should fight out the Grand Final next Saturday. I will be there along with about 100,000 others to witness the match.

On Saturday we had a great Vietnamese lunch with our daughter Kim. Kim is over the worst of a very nasty cold and this was the first time we had seen her on this visit to Melbourne. I also caught up with Keith and Jeff at Saturday night's footy match. We enjoyed a couple of quiet beers together like we have done numerous times before while attending regular Saturday AFL matches over about 20 years or so.

On Saturday afternoon, Kate, Arj and the two grand children headed aff to birthday party. Charli went in her fairy costume and she thought she was just the most perfect thing ever. She seems very pleased with herself in this photo.

We were invited down to Drouin on Sunday by friends Barry and Rainy from when they had popped in at Kate's home earlier in the week. Though not a hot day, we enjoyed a great meal, some great hospitality and few drinks outdoors. Other friends Wayne and Launa were there too, they had recently returned from a week in Hawaii (which they just loved!)

Barry and Rainy have been living at Drouin (about 100k's south of Melbourne) for over 5 years now. It is an acre block and they have done a great job rejuvenating what had once been a 'tired' block of land. Barry loves to encourage birds to visit their yard and they have cockatoos, galahs, lorikeets and other birds feeding from trays they have set up with seed near their back door. These two King Parrots are probably the most beautiful of their visitors.

Trish Much Improved

Friday started lovely and sunny but right now just after lunchtime the clouds have rolled in and there is a threat of rain. The weather forecasters say we will hardly get anything but it sure looks pretty dark and threatening outside. I am off to the footy later for tonight's match and I don't want to get caught out in the rain!

Trish is quite a deal better today. We grabbed a little time yesterday to get out of the house and down to the local shopping centre for a look around. Other times have been spent keeping an eye on the two grandchildren. Arj and Kate are both at work today so Trish and I are keeping an eye on James and Charli. James is enjoying an early afternoon nap right now, while Charli is busy finishing off the chocolate cake. James enjoyed being pushed around in his 'car' this morning.

School holidays get underway tomorrow so we will have both Kate and Arj at home.

I have spent a bit of time trying to get Office 2007 to install on Chris' laptop. It came with a 25 startup trial on it and we tried to install another version over the top of it. This was a mistake! Despite installing over the top of the trial version, we still get the warning, 25 more startups to go! Office 2007 needs to be totally uninstalled now and this is harder to do than it looks! then it needs to be reinstalled onto a 'clean' hard drive.

The Wind Has Gone

At last a day in Melbourne without wind! The clouds no longer wizz by but rather move lazily across the sky. It was down to around 6 degrees this morning, a bit of a shock to the system after the weather warming up back home.

Trish's day went from bad to worse yesterday and she spent much of it in bed fighting off some sort of tummy wog. With both Kate and Arj heading off to work this morning and Trish laid up in bed it meant I was in for a pretty big day looking after the kids! Trish however is now out of bed and though not 100% is able to attack her Sudoku puzzles and keep an eye on things. Charli is busy watching kid's shows on TV while James moves from one thing to another. At the time I took this snap, riding his 'bike' backwards is what seemed to grab his attention.
So today will be an 'as you go' day, a bit like damage control! Hopefully all health worries will be much improved by tomorrow and we can get out a bit. Fancy, almost a week in Melbourne and we still have eaten at a Vietnamese Restaurant yet!

Trish had a call this morning informing her that her flight departure time to back home had been put back by a couple of hours! This seems to be happening a lot lately!

A Cold Tuesday

The warmer weather of the first few days in Melbourne have now deserted us and now we have an icy strong wind blowing. I got to have a quick play on the internet while we are involved with baby sitting. Kate worked on Monday so Trish looked after Charli and James. James is a great help when I am on the computer. Here he is passing the mouse to me, how he ever got it I will leave to your imagination!

Managed a few phone calls yesterday morning and sorry to hear Eddie isn't recuperating too well. He is not as far advanced as he hoped after losing a kidney recently. I saw Gordon and Anne during the afternoon and caught up on a lot of gossip. I worked with both of them while in schools here in Melbourne. Also so heard that a former colleague, Fred McCubbin had passed away after a long battle with cancer. Barry and Rainy dropped by for a quick chat. Barry was in Berwick for further treatment on a damaged hand he suffered at work and they popped in to say hello.

Trish isn't moving too well today, currently she is lying down, book in hand and the heater working its tail off! Grey clouds roll by and the cold wind has only dropped slightly. Kate and the two kids are at Mum's Group this morning.

On the Sunshine Coast it is in the low 20's as I type!

Sunday In Melbourne, Victoria

We flew out of the Sunshine Coast Thursday morning to arrive in windy Melbourne mid afternoon. The wind has kept blowing ever since. After spending time with the 'lad' and his family Thursday evening we finally arrived at Kate's 9:30 pm well and truly ready for bed!

Friday was then spent catching our breath and keeping an eye on the grandchildren, James and Charli while Kate and Arj went to work. Trish found this an extremely pleasant duty. I mowed the lawn ready for a family BBQ on Saturday afternoon. I then left the house about 4:30 pm and drove to Holmesglen railway station where I caught a train to the M.C.G. to watch the first of my Aussie Rules Finals. It was great! I enjoyed it immensely. I watch all the games on TV when at home but then nothing beats just being at the game live. I eventually hit the cot at about midnight after another train ride and a 25 minute drive.

Though still a bit weary, I awoke Saturday morning to the sound of children just rising! Later that morning it was to the park for a swing and a play on some of the equipment there. The wind continued to blow but the weather was fine, sunny and reasonably warm. The photos on this page show Charli (top) on a see-saw while you needed a battering ram to get James off the swing.

Mid afternoon Chris and family arrived for a late lunch BBQ before I left the gathering again to head into the M.C.G. for more footy finals. I really enjoyed it, catching up with some mates that I used to go to the footy with 20 years earlier. We had a few beers, but not too many. It was 11:30 before I was again home and heading to bed!

Sunday was an R&R day for me. I spent some of the afternoon baby sitting while the others headed to do some shopping! Tonight it is out for tea, I expect o be in the cot a lot earlier than 11 pm tonight! At last it seems the wind is subsiding!

A Different Sort Of Virus!

I got this today, with thanks to Texas Lou!













Virus Warning

Just wanted to send you this Warning to be on the Lookout!

There's absolutely no cause for Alarm.

This is just to prepare you for the Event.


I thought you would want to know about this e-mail virus.

Even the most advanced programs from Norton or McAfee cannot take care of this one.
It appears to affect those who were born prior to 1970.

Symptoms:

1. Causes you to send the same e-mail twice.

2. Causes you to send a blank e-mail.

3. Causes you to send e-mail to the wrong person.

4. Causes you to send it back to the person who sent it to you.

5. Causes you to forget to attach the attachment.

6. Causes you to hit 'SEND' before you've finished.

7. Causes you to hit 'DELETE' instead of 'SEND.'

8. Causes you to hit 'SEND' when you should 'DELETE.'

IT IS CALLED THE 'C-NILE VIRUS

I can now vouch that it is magpie swooping season. Just back from a 10k bike ride this morning and got swooped several times by the one 'varmint'. He was not very aggressive and I were way out in the open. I think the cable ties will go on my helmet in the next day or so.

We have visitors we are collecting from the airport today. It is John and Sue who are spending a night with us. I guess we will be off to the RSL Club tonight, Sue loves the poker machines. Jade Hurley is playing there tonight, a real Australian rock 'n roll blast from the past

We head south to Melbourne on Thursday. Both of our footy teams won over the weekend and get a week's rest next weekend. I have my finals tickets (my MCC Member's card) packed already!

Sunny Sunday

After the rain late last week I tipped a total of 57mls (well over 2 inches) from the rain gauge on Friday morning. Saturday morning saw me to the Computer Club again. I have met a couple of kindred spirits at the Club and it has become a highlight for me.

A week ago one of the older ladies at the Computer Club gave me a 'book' she had written for me to read. It was all about her walking out of Burma with her brother during World War II as a 12 year old. She and her brother lived in (and off) the jungle for 6 months while they made their way on foot from Southern Burma to cross the border safely into India. It was an incredible story telling of their adventures and their brushes with the Japanese soldiers. She even collected the gold from the teeth of dead soldiers and kept the gold in a cigarette tin! I will spare you some of the details when it was either them or a Japanese soldier as to who would survive an attack.

It is great to help people out with their pretty basic computer problems and I enjoy catching up with others there.

A great sunny day today and about 24 degrees. It was a great morning for a bike ride. The photo above left shows how the grass surrounding one of the pathways is getting a bit overgrown. We are heading into our wet warm season and the grass is starting to grow like crazy. Our estate is quickly drawing to a "Sold Out" stage. New pathways and walk bridges encourage everyone to walk or cycle for exercise. It is now easy to do a 10 kilometre ride here and not leave the estate.

We are entering magpie swooping season and both Trish and myself are very wary of magpies while riding our bikes! Magpies seem to take special delight in swooping cyclists, even more delight than swooping pedestrians! Any loud bird calls or a passing shadow glimpsed out the side of your eye generally causes both of us to flinch in preparation! We haven't had any problems yet, but we are both very wary! This photo was in the local newspaper earlier this week and shows just how vicious some of these rogue birds can be!

Magpies are nesting at the moment and the males tend to swoop to protect their mate and the eggs or young.

A Wet And Windy Thursday

It has been so dry for about 5 weeks now with hardly any rain at all. It started about 6 am this morning and has been raining all day! We have had a total of about 40mls now at just after 3:30 pm (an inch and a half in the old terms) and the heaviest rain has been promised for overnight and into the morning tomorrow. We have been warned areas inland from us can expect a total over 100mls (4 inches)!

As a follow up to yesterday's post Lou Ann directed me to this photo today. Evidently it was all over the front page of the local paper The Abilene Reporter. There was a craft show and this 6 year old had entered this model of a shooting outing he had made out of tongue depressors. What hope do these kids have?

Now for a bit of a smile. I received this from my mate Keith down in Melbourne. There isn't much from Keith I can include on this blog page but this one is quite good!

"The three Goldberg brothers Norman, Hiram and Maxwell invented and developed the first automobile air conditioner. On July 14, 1946 the temperature in Detroit was 97 (37) degrees! The three brothers walked into old Henry Ford's office and sweet talked his secretary into telling him that three gentlemen were there with the most exciting invention in the automobile industry since the electric starter!

Henry was curious and invited them into his office. They refused and instead asked that he come out to the parking lot to their car.

They persuaded him to get into the car which was about 130 degrees (55), turned on the air-conditioner and cooled the car down immediately. The old man got very excited and and invited them back to his office where he offered them 3 million dollars for the patent.

The brothers refused saying they would settle for 2 million but they wanted recognition by having a label "The Goldberg Air-Conditioner" on the dashboard of each car it was installed in.

Now old man Ford was more than a little Anti-Semetic and there was no way he was going to put Goldberg's name on 2 million Ford vehicles.

They haggled back and forth for about 2 hours before they agreed on 4 million dollars and just their first names would be shown.

And so even today, all Ford airconditioners show on the controls the names 'Norm, Hi and Max'.

There, now you know it ...... See, you are never too old to learn."

Thanks Keith!

Gun Laws

Lou Ann is one of my Blog Readers. She lives in Texas in the USA and today she emailed me an article taken from the local newspaper in Abilene. Yesterday was a holiday in the US and as you can read below, the opening of the "Dove" season.

It is amazing how views on gun ownership can be so different to those views held by the majority of Australians. Lou Ann and her husband share the views of most Australians and have difficulty finding their rifle and especially the cartridges that it uses in their home. They live on the land so this gun is used only when absolutely required to put down a rabid animal.

The article appears below!

People in West Texas observe the Labor Day holiday differently than most. Dove hunting season opened Monday and with it came hunters waiting for the day in anticipation.

Mark Edwards said Sept. 1 is absolutely like a holiday for him. But not in the way labor union leaders intended more than 100 years ago.

"I've never missed it out here," said Edwards, who has hunted at the same south-Abilene spot for almost 20 years. "I'm out here every Labor Day Weekend.

The familiar smells of mesquite, dirt, sweat and maybe water in a stock tank never change. After the first few shots, gunpowder mixes in with the other smells as hunting season officially arrives. As Edwards barely gets his shotgun out and loaded, he shoots his first dove. His 8-year-old son Cole takes target shots at a cactus flower with his Red Ryder BB gun. Mark says he's brought Cole hunting with him for a couple of years, and the camo-clad hunter is anxious to help.

With neighboring shots from fellow hunters, Cole keeps his eyes on the lookout for any doves.

"Bird!"

It's 300 yards away. A speck in the sky.

The "phfpt" of his Red Ryder comes between loud, sharp 12-gauges blasting.

Cole's cousin, Kyle, drives by and stops in the distance. Cole leaves his dad to see his 9-year-old cousin.

Left standing under a mesquite tree, Mark tries to watch for the doves flying around him. He hits some, misses others and doesn't see a few until too late.

After such a long break, Mark makes some good shots. But the easy misses frustrate him.

He receives some help when Maggie, a bird dog, joins him to help fetch fallen birds. The 14-year-old dog is wet from at least one trip into the tank and covered with burrs from another excursion into some brush. During dry spells, she pants and whimpers softly, ready for a new bird to retrieve.

After about an hour, Mark walks back to his white Chevy Tahoe and unloads his pouch, full of birds.

They're weighing his jeans down.

A little later, Mark gets another visitor.

"Havin' much luck?" said Larry Curnutt.

"Not bad," Mark said. "Missed a few."

Yells periodically come from closer to the tank after shots. Whether they went down or not, Kyle let his feelings show.

"Yeah it was me over there," said Kyle. "I was yelling at one. I hit its tail; it just didn't go down."

Kyle shot two doves with his single-shot 20-gauge Monday, but said it took probably 50 shells to do the job.

Just before 7 p.m., Mark reached his limit. Everyone else started calling it a day then, too.

Mark's daughter, Dallas, and Casey's daughter Mackenzie meet Mark as he walks toward the others. Dallas squirms away as her father jokingly reaches out to her with his blood and feather covered hands.

He meets David Coleman and his family as they drive out of the field.

"I got my limit after 20 straight misses," David Coleman said exaggerating. "But I finally figured it out."

When the day is over, the mosquitoes, cactus and heat aren't enough to deter a hunter.

"It's just an opportunity to come out with friends and family and get together and enjoy the outdoors and shoot some birds," said Edwards. "It's a good time."

This link will take you to a .pdf document with the details of the Opening Of The Dove season.

http://web.reporternews.com/static/content/pdf/openseason.pdf

The document is about 800kb so may take a while to open if you have a dial up connection. .pdf documents usually open in Adobe Reader which most computers have installed on their computer. Adobe Reader is a bloated program and people usually prefer Foxit Reader which is free and much quicker at opening up than Adobe Reader.

Foxit Reader is free, only 2.3MB and can be downloaded from here:

http://downloads.foxitsoftware.com/foxitreader/FoxitReader23_setup.exe

You will need to zoom in on the document to read what has been written. The 'Zoom In' icon is usually a circle with + sign in the middle of it.

Spring Is In the Air

A real summer feel today, mild overnight temperatures, sunny mornings and mid day temps about 24 degrees. This morning I was into my summer routine of watering the garden and cleaning the pool before setting off on a 10k bike ride. The forecasters are still promising a wet Thursday night and Friday with cooler winds over the weekend.

Texas Lou was saying that they are well over 1000k's from New Orleans and their forecasters are saying that they won't feel anything from Cyclone Gustav. They have had plenty of rain there, enough to have her lawns lush and green.

Yesterday I received this video. Now I get lots of videos sent to me, most are not suitable to have in my blog page! But I had a good grin with this one and I hope you do too. Sorry to those on a dial-up connection, this may take a bit long for you to access. After clicking on Play, the 'pink' line shows how the clip is downloading and the red line shows how the clip is playing.



The movie file is 4mb so I will let you work it out how long it will take to download and play depending on your connection. Once you have played it once, the file is temporarily stored on your computer so you can then replay it again smoothly. Start it playing, go and make a cuppa and by the time you get back, just hit play again!

Usually we get pretty good TV footy coverage up here but now the finals are on all the footy goes to the Free To Air Channels. Trish's team Hawthorn plays on Friday night and this is the only game we are not getting 'live' on TV or the radio this weekend. We will have to listen to the game via the internet. I can set it up so the the internet radio coverage can be heard on a small transistor radio. It is a few seconds lagging behind 'real' time but it is better than nothing! I had the same problem during the 2007 finals series.

All other finals will be 'live' on TV.

News From Monday

Not a lot has been happening, especially following a Footy Watching weekend! The Home and Away matches are now over and from next weekend we get into the AFL Finals. My team currently sits on top of the table while Trish's team sits second! There should be some friendly rivalry over the next four weekends! We head down to Melbourne on Sept 11th and I should get to all games from that weekend onwards.

August was a very dry month here with only 5 mls being recorded in my rain gauge. Despite this low total, we are still above average in total rainfall for the year! However the forecasters are promising us a wet Thursday and Friday here in the SE corner of Queensland.

We are now into spring. This winter was the coldest we have had for the last 8 years. Today is forecast to be showery and getting to about 22 degrees. It was 15 degrees overnight! The photo to the left was taken a few minutes ago and shows how nice the day really is!

I wonder how the weather is in Sweetwater Texas with Cyclone Gustav heading towards new Orleans?

We are expecting visitors this time next week, John and Sue are heading our way from Melbourne to stay for a night before they push on to his mum's place for a couple of nights. John has a Financial Advisor's Conference on the Gold Coast late next week and uses this to drop in for a quick visit. I guess we will be going to the RSL next Monday Night! Sue is keen on the pokies (slots)!

Our palms in the backyard are growing quite tall. Trish keeps cutting the lower fronds away as they become a bit bedraggled with the wind. The palms provide great shade in summer. The shade makes getting other colorful plants difficult to grow in the back garden. The creeper on the back fence has been growing for several years now and seems to have 'stopped'. (You will need to click on the picture for a larger view to see the creeper, then click on Back to return to this page.) As you can see the gaps in the palings of our back fence don't provide 100% privacy either. I think a trip to the plant nursery is on the cards for advice on what colorful tallish plants will grow in shady conditions.