Left Feeling A Little Silly

Sunday 27th May, 2012

Surprisingly the weekend weather hasn't been too bad.  We're not having a heat wave nor has it been freezing.  Both days have been quite pleasant, some sunshine, little or no wind and a few showers.  I'd prefer the temperatures to be another 10 degrees or so warmer.

On Saturday we didn't have much planned.  I needed to go and pick up a few supplies and Tony had to go to the bank.  During the week he received a new ATM bank card and on Thursday night thought he would try it out before destroying his old one.  It got declined.  We went across the road and tried it in a teller machine, also denied as it said he had the wrong pin number.

On Friday he didn't have any time to go to the bank and so we went yesterday morning.   Apparently the card is linked to an account that we have not used for several years.  We assumed the account had been closed as we had transferred whatever balance was in the account into another account.  Even when this account had been opened they never issued an ATM card for it. 

So, when this card comes in the mail we thought it was to replace his everyday ATM card.  We felt like complete dummies.....lol.  The two cards had completely different numbers which we didn't even notice.  Thank god he didn't destroy his other ATM card.

After we went and did some shopping we decided to take a drive into the country.  This time we headed for the Clare Valley.  It has been ages since we were last up there.  Clare is around a 2 hour drive from Adelaide in what they call the Mid North of South Australia.  You can go this way if you are planning on going to the Flinders Ranges.  It is predominantly farming land but also a very well known wine region.

We went to Mintaro, an historic town near Clare.  Mintaro is well known for its slate.  We went and tried to lose ourselves in the Mintaro Maze.  I didn't even know it existed but back in 1995 the Morris family planted up over 800 gold conifer plants which now form the maze.  It is trimmed twice a year and takes around 50 hours each time to do it.  We did get a  bit 'lost' a couple of times and had to back track, but it was fun.  I think we'll take Katie up there to see if she likes it.

An old converted barn/warehouse

From there we went to Martindale Hall.  A beautiful old house, but unfortunately it was closed.  They close at 4.00pm and we were there just after that.  I think this is the house that they used for the movie "Picnic at Hanging Rock".  I have been there before, many years ago, when I went with a former neighbour and her Crafts' Club.  Tony has never been there.  That is one place we will definitely be going back to see.

Clare was only a short drive up the road, we didn't stop but continued further north.  We really had no idea where we were, Tony was going to head for Quorn until he saw on the signpost that it was nearly 200 kms away.  It was getting on for 5.00pm by now.  We could've gone onto Jamestown, but instead we headed for Brinkworth, Snowtown (well known for the bodies in the barrels murders), Port Wakefield and Adelaide.

Main street of Clare

We stopped at Port Wakefiled for a bite to eat (dejavu, we're only there last weekend) and headed back to Adelaide and home.  We got home around 8.30pm.  

Today Tony cleaned the car, I did some more washing (it seems to be never ending) and made a big pot of chicken and vegetable soup for dinner tonight and tomorow night and the next night,  because I made so much.  Other than that it was a nice relaxing day.

A Blast From Antarctica

Thursday 24th May, 2012

The weather has turned for the worse.  Yesterday morning we had high winds and some country areas had dust storms.  In the afternoon came the rain and a dramatic drop in temperature.  Today, the forecast is for rain and a high of 13 degrees C.

I rang Robyn last night to see if they had got home safely.  They had.  She said that they went back to Port Vincent on Monday and again on Tuesday and had caught themselves around three dozen mullet.  They don't eat them, she said that they have a reddish tinge to the meat and are a different flavour to other fish.  Instead Bob puts them in the deep freeze to use in the crabbing nets.

Dianne and I are going out for lunch and a bit of shopping later.  We ended up going to Tea Tree Plaza.  We had lunch at Billy Baxters and then did some shopping.  Dianne had to get a birthday present for her granddaughter, Phoebe.  I also was able to get her something. 

My original plan was to put some money in a birthday card for her and let Megan (her mum) buy her something that she needs.  Apparently she loves drawing and making things.  She will be 4 next Wednesday, and so I bought her some drawing books, stencils and story books.  Most things that we looked at, suitable for her age, Dianne said that she already had.

We went off and had coffee and were just sitting around chatting when suddenly it was 5.oo pm.   Where did that time go?  I rang Tony and told him that seeing we were still at the Plaza, he may as well get off the bus there.  We waited for him to arrive and then went and dropped Dianne home.

It was close to 6.00pm by then and so we came home for a toilet stop, got the water bottles and then went into town to fill them up.  On the way we stopped at Ray's Outdoors to look at jackets (found nothing suitable) and decided that we may as well have dinner out, even though we had left over casserole at home.  That will be good for tomorrow night.

We ended up going to Fellini's in North Adelaide.  Seeing the weather was awful outside it was surprising how busy they were.  We had to wait quite awhile for our meal but it was worth the wait.  Tony had Chicken Asparagus and I had Veal Saltimbocca with garlic mash.

By the time we got home it was nearly 10.00pm.  Too late to do or start anything so it was early to bed for us.

The Sign On Our Door Says "Gone Fishin"

Monday 21st May, 2012

This past weekend we had arranged to go to Stansbury, on Yorke Peninsula, about a two and a half hour drive from Adelaide.

Robyn and Bob had booked a cabin in the local caravan park and had invited us to come over and spend the weekend.  As it was the weekend we had Katie, she was excited to be going as well.

Friday afternoon I went and met Katie, and then we went and got Tony from work and headed off.  We got a good run out of the city.  We stopped at Port Wakefield for a bite to eat for dinner and then off to Stansbury.  Last year we went to Ardrossan, but Stansbury is further down the Peninsula.  We arrived there around 7.30pm.

Robyn and Bob were there to meet us at the gates as we had to have our own pass number to enter the park.  The cabin was quite comfortable, this one had a separate bedroom with two bunk beds in it.

Katie was very happy, right outside the cabin was a playground.  She wasted no time in going out to it and before long she had several other kids with which to play.

view from the front door of the cabin

Luckily Robyn had brought spare jammies with her.  Katie was too hot wearing her pj's, from all the playing, so Robyn gave her one of her nighties.

During the night there were these weird noises.  They sounded like someone was walking around inside the cabin and then there was, what sounded to me, the noise of rope on a deck of a boat being curled.  The noises came from the corner of the bedroom in which we were sleeping, right where my head was.

Robyn and Bob also heard these noises and Bob said that at one stage he got up and went outside to investigate but nothing was there.  I think we had a ghost.

Saturday morning, after breakfast, we went down to the jetty and tried our hand at catching some squid.  Robyn showed Tony and Katie how it was done.  No sooner had Robyn put her line in and she had a squid on it.

Katie was happy, she could at least get to karate chop it for it to change colour.  That was the only thing we caught.  Tony had lots of bites on his fish but couldn't keep the squid on there long enough for him to pull one in.

We went back to the cabin and had soup for lunch.  Bob had made some before they left home.  It was yummy and warmed us up before our next fishing adventure. 

In the afternoon we went to Port Vincent, about 17kms from Stansbury.  Here we fished from the beach in the hope of getting some mullet.  Tony caught a mullet and a nice size tommy ruff, Bob caught a nice size tommy ruff, and Katie caught 2 small trumpeters.  Tony and Bob also caught heaps of trumpeters.  They are referred to as 'shitties'.

Robyn didn't fish.  She helped Katie and showed her how to put bait on the fish hooks and to remove the fish from the hooks.  Katie is now the experienced fisherwoman.  She was excited to catch her fish even though they weren't very big.

The first one she caught, she put in the bucket as she wanted to keep it.  With all the others that were caught she was happy playing with them, giving them a burial. digging them up and feeding them to the sea eagles and seagulls.

Once the tide started to go back out we packed up and called it a day.  We went back to Stansbury, tidied ourselves up and went to the local hotel for dinner.

Everytime we were at the cabin, Katie was on the playground with her new found "friends".   That night we didn't hear any strange noises while we were in bed.  Maybe the 'ghost' was happy with us staying there.

Sunday morning Tony and Bob cooked us bacon and eggs for breakfast and while they were doing that I started packing up our gear. 

After breakfast we took a drive down to Wool Bay, Coobowie and Edithburgh.  Yorke Peninsula is shaped like a boot and Edithburgh would be on the 'heel'.

We had a bit of lunch at Edithburgh, came back to Coobowie for Katie to have a play on the playground there and then back to the cabin to pack up the car and get ready to head off back to Adelaide.

We left Stansbury just before 3.00pm and got back to Adelaide around 5.30pm.  Dropped Katie off and then came home.  We had a fantastic weekend.  On the way home Katie told Poppa to turn around and said "let's go back".  She said she had the best weekend and in the morning had told us that she didn't want to go home.

Robyn and Bob are staying on until Wednesday when they will return home.  Let's hope they catch lots of fish.

Waste Of A Day

Tuesday 15th May, 2012

At the moment we are not happy with the Service Department of City Mazda.  This morning I had to drop the car off once again for them to look at the iStop.  They told me it should be ready to pick around 3.00pm.

After having done that I walked down to the tram stop opposite the Entertainment Centre and caught the tram into the city.   I went off and had a coffee, deposited some money into the CPS Credit Union and Tony rang me to arrange for us to have lunch together.   He said he would free in about 15 minutes.

We met up and had lunch, and then I had a wander down Rundle Mall.  They were announcing the Police Officer of the Year award, it went to a female officer, Caroline Bristow, and I watched and listened to the SA Police Dixieland Band for awhile.  I then made my way further down the Mall.

I came across two young buskers, the little boy would have been no more than 10 or 11 years old and his 'assistant', a girl would have been around 8 years old.  At the time I wondered why they weren't in school.  The boy is some kind of magician and escape artist.  He did his act and at the end he asked the audience to put some money into his hat. 

He kept saying that when we went to work we got paid, well this was his job and this was the way he got 'paid'.   He also wanted to get enough money so that next year he could go on "Australia's Got Talent".  If he classed that as his job I wonder whether in fact he does go to school.  The parents of these children didn't seem to be hovering around.

Around 2.45pm I went and caught the tram back to the Entertainment Centre and then walked back to City Mazda.  I didn't have to wait for Tony this time as he had a meeting at 4.15pm.  When I got back to City Mazda I had to wait for the car.  Finally the Service Manager came out to tell me that the battery appears to be the problem (we had already been told that last week when the car was there), but before Mazda are prepared to put in a new battery, the car has to go back, stay overnight and have the battery charged for a minimum of 6 hours.

On Saturday morning when we rang and wanted to take the car in then, they told us that they needed to do other explorative work to find out why the battery wasn't charging.  Well today I don't believe they did anything to the car other than have the battery on charge.  All of the instruments seemed to be working normally, whereas when the battery has been out of the car we have had to reset some of them.

So now the car is booked in for Monday 4th June to leave it overnight.  This time something had better be done.  I made it quite clear today to the Service Manager that we weren't happy.  I can understand his reasoning, their hands are tied by Mazda, as being a warranty job they are told what to do by Mazda.

Don't get me wrong.  We LOVE the car!  I just felt that my whole day was wasted.  Tony rang me around 5.15pm , when his meeting finished.  I picked him up, went off and had some dinner, did some shopping and then home.  Tonight I don't feel as tired as I did last week.

Black Caviar Returns For A Happy 21st

Sunday 13th May, 2012

Yesterday Morphetville Racecourse was once again crowded with some 30,000 racehorse fans to see Black Caviar run and try and win her 21st race.

She did, quite effortlessly.  Now the trainer is taking her to England to see how she competes against some of the English and European horses.  There is no other horse in Australia that can compete with her at the moment.

On Friday the weather forecast for Saturday didn't look too promising, showers and a maximum of around 16 degrees. In actual fact the day was quite pleasant, no showers, cloudy with long sunny breaks and quite mild.

On Friday night Tony and I went out for some dinner and on the way home he noticed that the iStop wasn't working on the car.  Yesterday morning we rang the car dealer to see if we could take the car in and have them replace the battery. 

When the car was in on Monday they told us that the battery was the problem.  No, they said, they had to investigate other avenues first and to bring the car back on Tuesday.  Another waste of a day it looks like for me!

We ended up going to the Village and while there ran into Rick and Dianne.  We went and had coffee and a chat with them.  Tony and I then headed over to the Plaza as we had some mending that needed to be dropped off.  While there we did a bit of browsing.

Last night we decided to go to the movies.  LOL  I had to laugh.  As we were driving out I said to Tony,  "Ooohh I'm going on a date".  "Huh!", he replies.  I looked at him and said "We're going out on a date, you are taking me to the movies."  The penny dropped.   Duh!!!

I then said to him that we should go parking after the movie, just like we used to do in the old days.  His reply, "Where can we go these days, everywhere we used to go is now filled in with housing".  "We'll find somewhere new, " I said.  We didn't, like responsible people we came straight home after the movie.

We went and saw Marvel, The Avengers.  Not my kind of movie.  I found it boring and coudn't follow the story line.  I even had a nanna nap during it.  Tony said after it finished that he didn't like it either.  The only good thing about it was Chris Hemsworth, who played Thor.  He is an Australian actor who used to be in one of our soapies, Home and Away.  I used to like him in that.

Today is Mother's Day.   Happy Mother's Day to all the mum's.  I personally don't celebrate Mother's Day.  To me it is too commercialised and I feel that we should tell them that we love them and do something special for them on other days, not just on one day of the year.

Yesterday while at the Plaza we saw husbands and fathers with their kids buying their wives and mothers gifts for today.  As we walked past one guy buying some perfume I questioned as to whether he did it any other day of the year, and if not, why couldn't he do it at other times.  I got a stony faced look.  Obviously not.

I most probably feel this way because when our son was young, he was into soccer and as it was played on a Sunday morning, it was up early and out the door. We did that for 13 years.  I  never had the luxury of a sleep in back then.  Now Tony will bring me breakfast in bed if I want it on any  weekend and we buy each other gifts any old time.  No waiting around for birthdays and Christmas for us...........hehehehe.

This afternoon we took a drive up to the Barossa Valley.  We went up through Lyndoch, had a look at Jacob's Creek, turned off at Bethany, up Menglers Hill and came to Angaston.  We stopped at a nice coffee shop, Blond Coffee, and had some lunch.  On the way home we came back through Nuriootpa and along the highway. 

The Valley was looking great.  The leaves on the vines had turned orange and brown and yellow, with still lots of green and so had the deciduous trees.  During our drive it was raining on and off and that gave a wintry feel to the countryside.  There's something that I love about driving in the hills while it's raining!

I Still Can't Walk Around Naked

Tuesday 8th May, 2012

This morning when I woke up, I hurt.  My legs were so sore and my back wasn't much better.  I think it was all that walking I did yesterday.  At the time I felt good, but today I am feeling it.  Maybe it's my body telling me to get out and walk more frequently.

The weather today is more like spring than autumn, 27 degrees.  Just perfect!!!  Tomorrow and for the rest of the week and into the weekend we are going to have showers and the temps back into the teens.......ugh!!!

This morning we had a new safety screen put on the front door.  Our old door was beginning to show its age, it wouldn't lock properly or close like it was supposed to and so it was time to look at getting another one.

We saw the display when we went to the Home Show and decided to go ahead and have a new door put on.  I also wanted the one way screen, (where you can see them but they can't see you) as I have been 'caught' out a couple of times. 

The last time was a few weeks ago, when after my shower and with the front door open, I was walking down the passage with only my underwear on and some guy came knocking on the door.  Better than the first time though, I was going to have a shower and after undressing in the laundry, I was starkers and walking back down the passage to the bathroom and there was a guy standing at the front door.

I quickly ducked into the bathroom and then into the bedroom to grab my dressing gown.  I don't know what he saw, I didn't ask.....rofl.  When the weather is nice I love to open the front door and let the fresh air in.

This company will come and measure and quote but don't go off and make the door, instead they make the door from their truck while they're on the job .  That way they can measure the door frame and make any adjustments that may be needed.

Unfortunately the one way screen doesn't work as we have a courtyard that comes off the passage and it lets in too much light.  Damn, I'll just have to be more careful in the future and make sure I cover up.

 

Same Ol', Same Ol'

Monday 7th April, 2012

This past week hasn't been very eventful.  Nothing much has been going on in our lives, same ol' same ol'.

typical of the skies over Adealide this past week

On Saturday Tony had to go into work.  He left home around 6am and didn't get back home until nearly 10.30pm.  It was decided to have a building shutdown as the electricians had planned to go in and replace the electricity meters with smart meters.  While the power was out it was thought that would be a good time to check out everything else in the building.

These days buildings have to be "green".  Buildings are given a star rating as to how "green" they are and this is supposed to attact prospective tennants.  To qualify for a "green" rating a building has to use low wattage lights, duo flush toilets, energy saving heating and cooling and a lot of other things.  It seems to be the 'in' thing.

Still, by the time Tony got home on Saturday night he was exhausted.  He said it wasn't from working too hard, it was more from not having anything to do, he just had to supervise and make sure things went smoothly.   He said that when he left the electricians still hadn't finished the meters.

On Sunday we went to Robyn and Bob's place as Robyn had bought some new light fittings.  She wanted Tony to put them up.   He is a qualified "A" class electrician.  She had bought 2 for their bedroom and one for the entrance hall.  The lights she wanted to replace were a bit 'old fashioned'.

The old lights Tony replaced

After having done that we sat around chatting and in no time at all it was close to dinner time.  We all ended up going to the pub for dinner......Roseworthy.......again.

This morning I had to take the car back to where we bought it from.  The Istop and the automatic window had stopped working.  I dropped the car off around 9.15am and instead of catching a bus back into the city I walked down to the Entertainment Centre and caught the tram.  It took me about 20 minutes.

While there I bought tickets for us all to go to Disney on Ice.  Robyn and Bob want to go this year as well.  The show isn't on until July but there weren't too many good seats left.   As I needed a block of 5 seats, that made it harder to get good seats also.

I caught the tram into the city.  My original plans were to catch the bus and go to the Marion Shopping Centre.  Once I got into the city I couldn't be bothered going on to Marion.  I did some shopping and met Tony for lunch.  He left work early, we caught the tram back to the Entertainment Centre and walked to City Mazda to pick up the car.  It was all good with the car.

On the way home we did some shopping, had dinner and came home.  I flopped in the chair, watched my now favourite TV show, The Voice,  and only moved when it was time to go bed.  Totally exhausted I was.

May Day

Tuesday 1st May, 2012

Today was wet.  We got some consistent rain which was good for the garden.  I'm not complaining. 

A new month and still counting the days to Spring......123 days to go!!!!

Happy May Day to those who celebrate it.  It is known as Labour Day in Australia and it's the day workers commemorate the granting of the 8 hour working day.

Only Queensland and the Northern Territory have the Public Holiday on the first Monday in May.  All the other states celebrate it in other months of the year. 

In South Australia we have the Public Holiday in October.