You May get A Laugh From This

Paddy had been drinking at his local Dublin pub all day and most of the night. Mick, the bartender, says 'You'll not be drinking any more tonight, Paddy.'

Paddy replies 'OK Mick, I'll be on my way then'. Paddy spins around on his stool and steps off. He falls flat on his face.

'What the....' he says and pulls himself up by the stool and dusts himself off. He takes a step towards the door and falls flat on his face again. 'Damn!' he says.

He looks to the doorway and thinks that if he can just get to the door and get some fresh air he'll be fine. He belly crawls to the door and shimmies up the door frame.

He sticks his head outside and takes a deep breath of fresh air, feels much better and takes a step out onto the pavement and falls flat on his face.

'Bi' Jesus... I'm soused,' he says.

He can see his house just a few doors down, and decides to try for it. He crawls down the street and shimmies up the door frame, opens the door and looks inside. He takes a look up the stairs and says, 'No flappin' way.'

But he somehow crawls up the stairs to his bedroom door and thinks, 'I think I can make it to the bed.' He takes a step into the room and falls flat on his face again. He says, 'This is hell. I gotta stop drinking,' but manages to crawl to the bed and fall in.

The next morning, his wife comes into the room carrying a cup of coffee and says, 'Get up Paddy. Did you have a bit to drink last night?'

Paddy says, 'I did Jess. I was totally 'whacked". But how'd you know?'

'Mick called.. You left your wheelchair at the pub.'

Drying Out

A low pressure area from North Queensland was forecast to travel about 1000k's southwards along the coast, then head out to sea from the Sunshine Coast (100k's north of Brisbane). News reports said there was plenty of flash flooding and other storm damage as the area headed south. A yacht with 37 passengers was on rocks on Hook Island in the Whitsundays, pushed there by the strong winds. All were saved by helicopter. We travelled near where the yacht was in trouble on our Whitsundays trip in October.

The rain was forecast to come in 2 bursts, a morning one followed by the more dangerous overnight surge. Eventually the low pressure area left the coast about 300k's north of the Sunshine Coast and headed out to sea. This meant we missed the worst of the wild weather. We received a total of 79 mls (over 3 inches) for the day with the rain starting about 5 am. We had 6 mls by 6:15 am when I emptied the gauge. A further 73 mls followed during the day yesterday and overnight.

We have now had 500mls for the year so far, 20 inches in the old scale.

Today there is hardly a cloud in the sky, a glorious blue sky and a top expected of about 31 degrees. However after getting 3 inches of rain yesterday it will be humid. The photo shows the plastic I sit the BBQ on under the pergola drying out. (BBQ's don't go well with white pavers!)

Trish is off to Stitcher's meeting today and we thought we might take a drive this afternoon.

We watched the period drama "Elizabeth, The Golden Age" last night. It stars Cate Blanchett who was hopeful of an Oscar Award for her performance as Queen Elizabeth. Though a little 'slow' it was a good film.

I wouldn't rush out to see it, but we both enjoyed it anyway.

Someone left a "Comment" on Monday's Blog Post. It was a very brief message with a link to a website which sells Pharmaceuticals. I deleted it.

Monday ....

I enjoy the drinking part of Home Brewing but there is another side too. The stuff has to be made and then bottled. Today I had to get ready to bottle the brew I put on last Tuesday (on the left in the photo below). Since then my back has been crook and even after two visits to the Chiropractor, it is still best described as 'tender'. But a brew waits for no man, when it is ready to be bottled, it needs to be bottled.

At 6:30 am this morning I was up ready to wash bottles. Each brew makes about 30 to 32 bottles. I had almost 60 empty bottles so I decided to wash all of them and put a second brew on (on the right in this photo) ready to be bottled next Monday. Each bottle gets washed or rinsed 5 times. 300 washes or rinses (and about 90 minutes) later all 60 bottles were drying.

The pool was then vacuumed and after that I set about getting the new brew up and running. That took almost another hour. The back was feeling good so I decided to mow the lawn as well. 30 minutes later that was finished.

It was about 10 am and the weather today is overcast and cool with some light rain promised for later today. I jumped on the bike and did a lazy 10k's.

When the bottles are 100% dry they need to be stored safely. I will do this later this afternoon.

I will sleep well tonight and hopefully the back will be OK tomorrow morning.

Last week's rainy weather really brought the frogs (and cane toads) out. Their croaking can be very very load. Trish found this guy in the garden!

Remember you can click on each photo for a larger view. Then just click "Back" to return to this page.

A Quiet And Pleasant Sunday

This morning there were 14 mls (a little over half an inch) of rain in the gauge. A coolish breeze and a morning pool temp around 24 degrees. After I had vacuumed the pool it was off on a 10k bike ride around the estate we live on. I had a look through a house being built on a small block similar to ours. However it had a 'double' garage (more like 1 1/2 garage) and because the house size is limited to 50% of the land size, the larger garage meant you had smaller rooms. It was three bedrooms but you would struggle to fit a double bed into the two smaller rooms. I reckon our setup is pretty reasonable with a single garage and a garden shed to hold the 'extras'.

Here is another photo I took from slides while at the Computer Club yesterday. It is Chris' 5th birthday party and it was taken in the 'school residence' at Hoddle's Creek. I was the Head Teacher there at the time with one other teacher and about 50 kids. It was a beautiful spot in the country. We have some great memories of family BBQ's held in the backyard of the residence at Hoddle's Creek.

Trish's sister Pam's son Simon became a Dad recently and this photo came through of the proud mum and dad. We don't see too much of them but Trish and Pam try to catch up when we get down to Melbourne. The two sisters spend much of their time together talking about respective grandchildren.

Facebook is all the rage today on the internet for socializing. Our two daughters Kate and Kim both have Facebook pages and use them to remain in contact with their circle of friends. They also use Facebook to swap photos and have pages of pictures of a day out they had at the races or a party or anything. I too have a Facebook page but it is pretty bare right now. I tend to use the blog to share our news.


Trish likes to browse the photo collections there too. The photo above is taken from Facebook and is of Kate's daughter Charli on the swing at the playground near their house and this photo to the left is kate's other child, James. Needless to say, James is smiling, he is always smiling ..... unless he is hungry!

Computer Club Day

I visited the Chiropractor again yesterday (Friday) and I certainly feel better today. I still need to be a bit careful getting out of a chair then turning quickly. However I took the plunge and went on a 6 km bike ride followed by a swim in the pool to cool off! With all the rain recently it is quite humid.

K-Mart have 320MB external hard drives for about $129. Seems a good deal to me. It was in their catalogue on Thursday.

At the computer Club today I saw a little program called CDburnerXP which looked a handy tool. It is a freebie but it does require .net before it will run. Just put CDburnerXP into Google and you will find the download easily. If you don't have .net already installed you will then be directed to a download site to download it. It is a large download though.

I also had a go at converting 35mm slides into photo files on the computer. I was not overly happy with the result but it was OK. I did a couple of photos from when we lived at Hoddle's Creek back in the early 1970's. The photo below is from Thailand in either 77 or 78.



I took a movie of the storm we got on Thursday afternoon and I have put it on Youtube. It goes for almost 5 minutes. There is a link on the right hand side of this page under Les' Links. Or just click on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phUla1JHiv0

I wouldn't suggest you do this if you have 'dial-up' as it is a fairly big movie file.

A few more storms today and another half inch of rain! Nothing overnight.

Trish found her Quilter's Group quite sociable and very chatty yesterday. She enjoyed it.