A Glorious Friday

Yesterday, Thursday, Trish jumped on a plane in Brisbane and winged her way down to Melbourne for 12 nights.  We bought a couple of tickets almost 12 months ago to fly to Melbourne.  They were very cheap and seemed too good a deal to miss at the time. 

They were a total of $160 for return flights for both of us.  That is $40 per person each leg of the trip.

When we bought them our daughter Kim lived in St Kilda and we were going to stay with her.  Her unit is right on the tram route with stops right outside her door.  Whenever we stayed there we didn't need a car.

Since then Kim has moved in her job to Perth in Western Australia and the unit is being rented out.  So we lost our accommodation.  This didn't suit me as it would now mean we would have to impose on others and we didn't have a car so we weren't at all independent.  I decided not to go.

It actually was cheaper for me not to go as the car parking in Brisbane for 12 nights was well over $100.  We lost my $80 flight fares but saved $100 on car parking!

On Saturday Trish is catching up with Kim who has arranged to be in Melbourne for her work which is headquartered there.  Trish will stay with two other lots of friends while there before heading back to Chris and the family prior to flying home Tuesday week.

We have had howling westerly winds for much of the week and though sunny looking, it has been bitterly cold.  I didn't ride because of the cold on Wednesday and missed Thursday as I was in "Sick Bay" following a wonderful drinks get together with friends.

But today Friday is gorgeous.  It is a true shorts and T-Shirt day with temps in the mid 20's.  That nasty westerly has left us alone.

I had decided to do a few jobs getting ready for summer while Trish was in Melbourne.  Today was the day I would give the pavers a 1x chlorine to 2x water sweep over and then give them all a gentle hosing down.  The mix kills the buildup of moss and mildew and allows it to be all hosed gently away.  This treatment is also non damaging to the pavers!

They looked great when I had finished.

With all the wind and now with muck from the pavers being washed into the pool, it was about time I gave the pool a vacuum.  This I did.

It has been almost 2 months since I had manually cleaned the pool filter.  The style of filter we have requires the filter cartridges to be manually removed and you hose all the gunk out of them onto the front lawn.

I opened the top of the filter compartment and removed the large cartridge for cleaning.  What I had overlooked was the automatic pool pump was due to come on in a few minutes!  While I was hosing out the filters in the front yard I noticed heaps of water gushing out of our storm water drain onto the street.

The new pool pump cycle had started, the empty and open filter compartment filled with water and then overflowed all across the back yard!  The photo above shows the water level in the pool by the time I ran back up the sideway and turned the pool pump power switch off.  The water level isn't meant to be anywhere near as low as that.

Of course had it have continued for some time the pump would have overheated (as there was no water to pump) when the water level dropped below the level of the skimmer box. During the brief few minutes the pump was operating the water level dropped around 4" or 12cms.

The pool is being topped up again from the house water supply and again the backyard is drying out.

I have computer club and plenty of footy on tomorrow.  Tonight I have pizza for tea!