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Somehow this blog has drifted into a fortnightly update. I require less slackness. I'm even not working overtime now, so I've no excuse not to keep it up to date.
My priority for the springtime is R&R. I need to recharge my batteries, get outdoors a lot, and spend quality time with C and K rather than hunched over my keyboard tapping away like I am now.
Last weekend in Lismore turned into a bit of a bookshop crawl, and next time is likely to be even worse, as we discovered that the municipal library hands out an official Lismore bookshop-crawl pamphlet (which is a bit much really, in a town where you can count the independent bookshops on your fingers).
Nonetheless, There has been much contented reading (and re-reading) this past couple of weeks - some LeGuin and some Greg Egan has really cheered me up. I still need cheering up. It's now 12 weeks since I got the flu, and I'm still a bit under the weather. I keep dithering about starting exercise - I disastrously went running a couple of times after 6 weeks and made myself very sick indeed, so I'm now overcautious and nervous about resuming some exercise.
The man from the council came and examined our cement formwork and pronounced it acceptable, so we have booked the cement truck to do the big pour on Monday, assuming the weather holds - the only caveats were that we also have to find some way to raise the railing round our balcony by 6 centimetres as it's not quite legal height, and we need to install mains-powered smoke detectors both upstairs and downstairs.
Amidst the brilliant sunshine we had one and a half days of torrential rain, starting last Thursday - the creek burst its banks and we couldn't drive into Nimbin - I stood by my car on the near bank along with a crowd of neighbours and joined in the communal tut-tutting and shaking of heads before executing a very soggy three-point turn and heading home.
We have now been in Australia 24 months, so we rang up to book our citizenship test (yes, they really do ask you questions about Don Bradman). Just because he's probably the most outstanding player of a team sport in history, there's no need to rub it in.
The big task this coming weekend is to take a chainsaw to the row of big palm trees on the north side of the house that steal sunlight - much as we like them, they are incompatible with the planned solar panels on the roof, and a couple of them are starting to lean ominously over the deck as they grow too. If it gets any warmer, I'll also be packing the logs away and retiring the woodstove for the summer - and that's a very happy thought!
On a less happy note, I can't let the Sarah Palin thing go by. I am aghast. No, that's not strong enough. I'm dumbfounded that her selection as McCain's running mate has led to a poll bounce for the GOP. Frankly, much like the Italians with Fini and Berlusconi, if the good citizens of the USA vote for someone who had to apply for a passport when her job as governor took her abroad, then they deserve what they get and may Cthulu preserve the rest of us. Seriously, I don't usually blog into this territory, but it's gone too far.
- • Palin believes the world was created in 7 days by a sky pixie
- • She's convinced man made global warming is a hoax
- • She's convinced evolution is a mistaken theory and would like creationism taught in schools (She's backtracked, but check her quotes before she was on the ticket)
- • She's against abortion
- • she's against sex education in schools
- • When newly elected mayor, she approached the town librarian with a query about how to go about banning books
- • her position on healthcare: "...less regulation, more competition..."
- • She's as pro-guns as you'd expect from a moose huntin' lady
- • She openly campaigns to have the remaining wildlife sanctuaries in Alaska (and offshore) drilled for oil
- • She's sharing a ticket with a septuagenarian with a dicky ticker - if he pops his clogs, she's CiC and her finger is on the button of the world's second largest nuclear arsenal.
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