I Drink Therefore I Am

Let me tell you something about living in the country.

I have lived in a lot of places.  For a long time, perhaps 10 years, I held a flat or house or room for no longer than I held a job - 12 months maximum, often closer to six; sometimes, but not often, as long as 18 months.  The longest I've ever lived at one address, barring my parents house, is 28 months, and that truly was an anomaly.  It was the last place I lived in western Europe before moving to Australia, so the goal of emigration is probably the only thing that kept me there.

I have lived in the north of England, in areas of poverty and greyness, where the temperature never seems to climb above 10 degrees no matter how hard it tries.  Such times are marked by odd memories, that every time you walked somewhere it was always dark, for instance.  That you could wear far too much makeup and get away with it, pretending vampishness and mystery, because nobody ever saw you in full noon sunlight.  There was no full noon sunlight.  Seduction was an art in such places, because it is simply too cold to be naked and uncovered, and every tryst becomes a game of pass the parcel, full of numerous unwrappings (and often a disappointing surprise at the end of it).

I have lived along the east coast of Ireland, with the sea not four minutes walk from my house, where I could walk for miles with the susurrus of the surf providing white noise that cannot quite drown out the roar of lorries on the strand road.

I have lived in and around the greater London area, where the press and clamour and colour of people provides as much of a jungle as a rainforest.  Still, and perhaps always, I will remember the press and the smells of exiting Clapham Junction station at 6pm on a summer's Friday, like walking into the noise of a carnival.  The rush and heat as you head into an evening of rum and new people and shouting above the noise of the pub and trying to blow cigarette smoke at nobody, which is impossible when you're surrounded by everybody.

And I have lived here, in the heat, and the dryness, and the quiet.

It's a Sunday evening, and I have a rum, and all of the news-providing appliances are switched off.  The house is silent, without even the ticks and creaks you associate with a wooden house in the heat.  The cats are asleep.  There is a whir from the ceiling fans, because circulating warm air is marginally better than stagnant warm air.  I cannot hear the noise of traffic from where I'm sitting.   Occasionally an ice-cube in my glass will crack or slip.  Otherwise there is just the noise of the keyboard, and the twittering, cheeping background of crickets, other insects and birds.

Autumn is coming.  It isn't quite just around the corner, but it's coming.  With it will come a little rain, and some cooler temperatures, and the opportunity to work in my garden, building the raised beds I want to build, preparing the soil to overwinter happily with more moisture and some clay-breaker.  I have seeds in a fridge in the garage that I need to sort through, deciding what to plant where.  I think I need to buy a lawnmower.  I will call the landscape gardener this week, and ask for his help and his ideas and his machinery to sculpt the front and back gardens into something more than compacted dirt.  For now, I will persevere, keeping my nursery-hoard of potplants alive with water saving crystals and the buckets from the shower, that fill as you wait for the water to reach the right temperature. 

This blog isn't about bushfires.  I am tired of talking about bushfires.  I am tired of what I have seen, and what I have heard.  I am tired of the smell of smoke, and the constant ringing and texting and emailing of people who are not sure whether or not I am near a bushfire.

I was near a bushfire.  I was near enough to smell smoke and see flames and take the details of burned people and feel what 50 degrees with a 100kmph wind feels like on your skin.  I was near enough to be empty with the horror and the loss and the sobbing of people for whom life as they knew it ended last Saturday.  I was near enough to phone relatives and have them gulp and howl on the other end of the line, and that was in response to good news.  Eamon's crumpled, smoke-stinking CFA uniform is still in a heap where he dropped it at five o'clock in the morning last Tuesday before toppling into the shower to wash soot off himself.  At some time later today I might finally manage to pick it up and put it in the washing machine.

I was near a bushfire, and at the same time, I was nowhere near a bushfire.

This blog isn't about bushfires.  It's about why bushfires make no difference.

Three years ago, on my old blog site, I posted a blog entry filled with the overwhelming awe you get when someone who fits into the tapestry of your life has worked a thread free and tugged on it so things start to unravel.
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I know what sort of person I am.

I'm the sort of person who wears a t-shirt that says "I bring nothing to the table" into a meeting that I believe is a useless waste of time.

I'm the sort of person who gets pushed to the front by the unhappy mob so that I can verbalise what's making them unhappy.  It's easy for them to do it, because I'm the sort of person who qualifies as acceptable collateral damage if there's going to be a demonstration of why "Don't kill the messenger" became a slogan in the first place.

I think I've turned into the sort of person that people feel they can't rely on, which is a pity because in the past I would always come through for anyone who asked me to.  The last year and a half haven't been good on that front - I would make excuses so I could stay wallowing in misery.  I'd make a new year's resolution to be more reliable, but I'd rather just make an effort. 

I'm the sort of person who'll forgive a reasonable outburst ten times faster than an unreasonable outburst.  In fact, I'll probably never forgive an unreasonable outburst. 

I'm the sort of person who knows what not to volunteer for.

I'm the sort of person who drinks too much and admits it.

I'm the sort of person who can smoke a packet of cigarettes on whimsy and then not buy another packet for six months.

I'm the sort of person who understands that, specifically because of the sort of person I am, I still have a lot of mistakes left to make.

What I don't appear to be is the sort of person who's ever been able to concentrate long enough on what she really wants. 

I'd make that into a resoluton for this year too, but I think I'll just make more of an effort.

Life is hilarious.

The things we say.  The things we don't say.  The things we do that we don't want to.  The things we don't do, even though we want to do them. The things we regret both doing and not doing, regardless of whether we wanted to do them or not.

Slowly but surely, I am coming alive again.  I feel like I'm recovering from a lengthy illness.  

That sort of peculiar agoraphobia that goes hand in hand with misery, and pretty much prevented me from leaving the house unless it was to go to work - it's diminished.  I make myself do things I don't want to do.  I make myself drive to the next town to go to the market.  I make myself drive to the shops when I don't want to.  I made myself go out at the weekend, even though my brain was thinking up excuses, and I had a great time.  See, the problem with being utterly miserable is that it stops you challenging yourself.  You're already miserable, so why would you risk making it worse?  So I've strapped myself to the no-more-misery chariot and we're warming up a bit before we start racing Ben Hur around the block.

I've started to foster cats and kittens for my local shelter.  It lets me be useful for a few weeks at a time in the life of some other small creature.  It also reminds me that I can't do everything, and that's a useful reminder to have in your life.  The shelter owner pointed out to me that in order to foster appropriately, you have to have a big enough heart to be able to give up what you've cared for to someone else.  Of course, I don't have a heart that big.  I hate giving them up.  Giving them up fucking sucks.  I don't trust anyone else on the planet to care for them as well as I think I do.  Of course I don't - because I'm deluded, and of course someone else can look after a cat as well as I can, and it's really not up to me to judge that a cat isn't well looked after just because its owner isn't doing precisely what I'd do, but that's entirely a different topic.  So I must be a masochist, because I keep on doing it.  I'm telling myself it's because it makes me drive a car full of pitifully wailing cats to the next town over without running off the road, and that experience has to be worth something.

So life is better. And more interesting.  And the most hilarious part is the bank rang me today to tell me some scrote had tried to order $6,000 of entertainment equipment on my visa debit card and have it shipped to Sweden. 

Because when people defraud me, they do it proper like.

I got nothin.

I wish I had something lyrical to contribute to your day, but honestly, I'm all out.

A friend of mine visited LA recently, and described it thus: "LA is a slightly dishevelled, sprawling, dusty desert city with the faded look of a woman that has smoked too many fags, spent too many days drinking whisky sours in the sun, and had one or two cosmetic enhancements. Has that same friendliness, gushy but a little blank."

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Hello there, old new life.

How peculiar you are.  You're like a song in stereo, but only one of my earphones works.  You're like someone has given me 200 pages of a 400 page book.  Initially I thought I'd been given the first 200 pages, and now I realise I've actually been given every second page.  Some people's lives are so simple, they know they have just half of the picture.  The half they have is complete, clear, full of promise of what the other half would be like.  It gives them something to strive for. 

My life is like the christmas present I got one year, a cocktail set.  It was one of those cheap swap-it-in-the-office type gifts.  There was a cocktail shaker, a measure and an ice tongs.  What I didn't realise was that the ice pick and the ice strainer were missing.  I never missed them particularly, but every so often when I was chiselling at a block of ice with a steak knife (a pastime that threatens to become more injurious the more you have to drink), or holding the ice back with my fingers while pouring out a drink, I had a vague awareness that there must be an easier way to do this.  

There is, usually, an easier way to do this.

There are little pieces missing out of every aspect of my life, and I only ever notice them when I'm doing something that makes me think "I'm sure this shouldn't be this hard".  You make things hard for yourself though.  You're the one who makes the decisions and heads down the paths and chooses the middle cup for the ball to be under.  "I think that one's the queen" you say, and you're the one who goes away with a lighter pocket when life, that spiny shyster, flips over a three of clubs.

Our new house will be finished in around five weeks.  When I examine that statement, for some reason there is not a single piece of me that believes it, or believes in it.  It feels like it will happen to someone else.  Perhaps because it has taken that long to come to pass?  I'm not sure.  I am tired to my bones of waiting to take another faltering step towards having the whole jigsaw.  

Still.

This too will pass.

...it's springtime.  Which means I no longer drive to work in the dark, because it's bright by 6.15am.  It also means I've hopefully seen the last ground frost, and will not have to pour a watering can of cold water over the icy windscreen on Ola La Beast for another 10 months at least.  The temperature is creeping back into the mid to late teens.  The fruit trees outside are coming into blossom.  Things that were dead are starting to look distinctly alive again, the way only deciduous things can. 

And I've just recovered from the flu, so I too am feeling distinctly alive again after feeling dead for 12 days.  And not the "I've got a head cold, atchoo, look at me, I have teh influenzers."  I mean the double-antibiotics, double-inhalers, temperature of 102, takes me 10 minutes to roll over in the bed sort of flu.  I had the "I miss my mum" sort of flu, the one where you sleep all day, but every time you open your eyes, there's still last night's glass of water and a hundred weight of tissues beside the bed because nobody cares for you when you're sick the way your mom did when you were a little 'un.  It was also the sort of flu where I could manage to do absolutely nothing except sleep and drink fluids.  If I lit the fire (after Eamon brought logs in, because no way could I manage that) I had to go back to bed and sleep for two hours.  

So it's nice to feel healthy again, and like I can actually do something without collapsing.  Additionally, 12 days of flu is a good way to lose a half a stone in weight, kids.  I didn't think anyone would notice, but I keep forgetting I work with an office full of women.  And apparently currently wear clothes that look like a tent on me. 

Our house is progressing.  I visit it every day.  I sit in the car and stare at it, willing it to be finished.  At this stage though, it's close to finished.

Gooood.

I bore myself.

This living situation, this life, this waiting, I am sick of the sound of my own frustration and tired of the noise of my discontent.

I am tired of the quirks of the way I am being exploited and played by other people.  I am tired of my own need to fix things being tweaked by the learned patheticness of other people.  If you create a need, I will fill it.  But the fill's run out.  I'm all out of fill.  Stop being needy, fill lives here no longer. 

I have a switch.  It's not a bad temper switch.  It's not a "Ooo don't play me or I'll get angry and you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" switch.  (Because chances are if you like me when I'm sober you'll also like me when I'm angry, which is like sober because the funny trips off somewhere else for a bit.)  The switch is the "I've had enough" switch.  You have to try really, really hard to flip it, because frankly I'm a bloody pushover and if you're in my daily life, then I'll almost always do more for you than you'll do for me because it suits me to please people.  It pleases me.  It makes me happy.  If you're happy, I'm happy. 

The switch is more like an overflow.  If I've had enough of you, nice goes somewhere else.  I'm vaguely aware of my tendency to do this, but only in the way you're vaguely aware that your hair might look crap from the back.  It doesn't really bother you, but I'm sure someone somewhere worries about it. 

Once I'm well and truly sick and tired of you, you could literally stand in front of me and commit suicide by stabbing yourself through the mouth with a carving knife, and I will impassively watch you do it to yourself.  Because I'm a believer in personal choice. 

The saddest part?  I'll probably clean up after you.

You can threaten anything you damn well like once you've tripped the switch, but I don't care.  I don't care if you're miserable.  I don't care if you're suicidal.  I don't care if you can't cope.  I don't care if the universe of which you're the living centre appears to be toppling.  If you are miserable, that's your choice.  If you are drunk, that's your choice.  If you hate yourself, here's a tip: it's less exhausting to like yourself.  I'll never be skinny, because that takes effort, but I'll never be morbidly obese, because eating that much is too much work.

I'd like to say I'm feeling a little low at the moment, but that's not quite true.  I'm just well and truly sick and tired of a lot of things, which gives me a sort of distant, impassive, distinterestedness.  Which is unfortunate, because the best use of the personal resource that is me is to give me just enough justification that I do lots of things to please you, and then dole out our pleasedness like post-Sunday-dinner treats. 

Everyone has the capacity to be unpleasant.  Some people avail of it every day, some don't.  I am rarely unpleasant to people, because my sense of self isn't fulfilled by the misery of others.  But that in itself is a problem.  When I have misery around me, my sense of self is unfulfilled.  An unfullfilled self - well, let's just say the devil drops all the work he has lined up for idle thumbs and makes a beeline for me.

Tiny, tiny little earthquakes.  They relieve the pressure of the big one, if you can manage them, facilitate them and orchestrate them.  Not to mention that they're quite fun if you're not at ground zero.

This blog is brought to you by the New York Times, via boards.ie; a bunch of idealists, the Lyrics Planet and a set of rose-coloured glasses.

It's raining, and it's been raining for days, and it feels like I should build an ark.  It's funny, even though we're in Australia and you'd think we didn't get that much rain, we get just enough here in Victoria that it doesn't take much to remind you of being in England when the weather is crap.  They've done the site cut on our land, which should be just magnificently muddy now thanks to the last few days.  Clay soil + torrential rain = the first contingency delay.  Still, I'm hoping the house will be finished by my birthday in mid-November. 

Hoping might not be the right term.  The ongoing saga of our house build is such that I am in a strange, untouchable place, without expectation and invulnerable to disappointment.  All of the administrative glitches that could go wrong in this build have gone wrong.  We chose a builder.  We chose a house.  We chose some land.  The builder looked at the land.  The builder said no to the land.  So we picked some more land.  Then we decided to buy the new land we had chosen.  Then Christmas happened and nearly scuppered our exchange.  Then the estate agent's lackey delivered our land contracts to the wrong house, where they sat as our exchange date came and went.  Then they fetched them back and delivered them to us.  Then they got the vendor to countersign only one copy. 

Then when the bank wanted a copy for them, the estate agent didn't have a signed copy countersigned by the vendor.  So our finance was delayed.

Then the land went through, and we put a deposit on the house we wanted.  Then we caught the builder trying to defraud us.  Then the managing director of the builder called a meeting with us at the builder's head offices.  The meeting went all right, but then the meeting follow up went wrong as the managing director's minions passed the buck about dealing with the difficult Irish people, so we cancelled our build.

Then we started again, choosing a house with a different builder.  We chose a house.  We paid our deposit.  We did our colour selection.  Then the bank told us we had to apply for our mortgage all over again because it had been more than three months from when we took the first draw down for the land.  We applied for the mortgage again.  Then the government told us they wouldn't give us the shiny new expanded first time buyers grant because we'd signed the contracts on the land in January.  So we explained that a field isn't a house, and subsequently the FTB grant doesn't apply to the quarter acre block.  The government said "Hmmm".  We said "Trust us, it's a field, not a house, if it was a house we would be living in it, trust us."

But now, the mortgage looks to be decided, the FTB grant appears to be organised, the builder has started the site cut and, torrential, biblical, where-is-my-ark rain notwithstanding, the house should start building soon.

It needs to start soon.  We need it to start soon.  I have a quarter-acre-block of plants in pots, waiting to form a garden.  Our cats are putting on weight because it's winter and the house is cold and we don't let them out any more because they just try to kill themselves and bankrupt us when we do.  (They're not fat, just padded.  My MIL's cat is fat.  She who apparently doesn't get any treats seems to be able to metabolise calories from the air through miracle feline osmosis, because she's a kilo overweight.)  We have nowhere to put anything, and we're tired of other people's furniture and other people's stuff. 

Still, hopefully we're most of the way there now, and it's not going to be THAT much longer before we can become hermits in our new house.

I've given up hypothesising about life and the universe.  It was a toss up between what would fail first, my liver or the holes in my personal philosophies.  That and I'm too busy to hypothesise.  ...should that have a zed in it?  ...yes, I'm that averse to spellcheck.

Anyway. 

House hasn't started yet . Should start sometime soon.  Before the end of this month, I hope.  Tired of waiting?  Try sitting this side of the keyboard.

Had a solstice party for 22 people last night.  It was more fun than we thought it would be, though the prior 24 hours were fraught with the sort of dramatic indulgences one would normally associate with women with bosoms like galleons under full sail, who sing opera for a living and whose form of address is normally preceded by 'dame'.  I got bored with the ridiculousness and went up to the cousins-in-law to drink whisky.  When I got home, the dramatic parties had worn themselves out and fallen asleep.  (Don't think for two seconds I missed the likeness to toddlers.)  So I only did half my food prep on Friday night.

Saturday morning, the mild whisky hangover woke me at 5.30am, which was actually a good thing because I started cooking.  Loaves of bread.  (x4).  Roast lamb, stuffed with rice, apricots, mint, pine nuts and spices, slathered in a pomegranate molasses before finish.  Two roast chickens stuffed with bacon and mushroom stuffing.  Gingerbread men.  Beef and guinness pies.  Salad prep, cheese plate prep, general prep. 

Roll on 22 people, descending upon food like vultures.  We had surprisingly little left, which was good, and everyone overate, which I know is somewhat disgraceful but I support the Roman theory of partying, so that suits me.  And there's nothing better to unite a bunch of adults in their thirties, forties and fifties than party games including apple bobbing and pass the parcel. 

I'm really not kidding when I say my life's a string made up of one crisis after another.  

This weekend, my mother in law is in Adelaide because her father has just died after a period of dementia and illness in a nursing home.  She left on Wednesday night.

It's the seasonal equivalent of December 1st in Europe.  It's probably about 14 degrees and it's misty.  Relative humidity is high.  And it's STILL pleasant.  It's pleasant because it's unusual, and what's seldom is welcome. 

Every time I start to blog it feels like I'm spouting the same old shite over and over, which is why there's been a dearth of blogging recently. 

Here's a factual update on how things are: we still live with my mother in law, with our two cats, and her cat and her two dogs and her chickens whose numbers vary depending on how well they're being looked after.  We are still building our own house, which has been quite the circus up to now.  The building process takes around 18 months, but the actual buiding of the house takes about four or five - the rest of the time is spent choosing, messing about, fielding disasters, having arguments, selecting things you want and you don't want and moving up the ladder of various waiting lists for various things.  If everything goes to plan, they'll pour the concrete slab base of the house in June this year, and the rest of it will follow in relatively short order.

On the 21st of June this year, the shortest day of the year in Australia, we are throwing a winter solstice party because it's only May and I already miss the sun.  Moving from one winter to another obviously traumatised me more than I knew possible.  It will allow us to open and drink the impressive nine litre bottle of wine Eamon got as a gift from one of his house-buying clients.  There will be a yule log.  There will be a mishmash of psuedo pagan games and traditions along with food that's showing a big angle on stodgy and comforting, if not quite traditional.

Christmas in summer is just wrong.  Next year we'll be doing it in a style that befits living in a hot country - stuffed roasted whole fish, salads, a celebration outdoors, as opposed to trying to shove turkey and stuffing down our necks when the temperature is in its twenties and the Christmas tree lights don't show up against the glare of the sun. 

Otherwise, it's the bloody same old.  Everything's "When we get the house" and "When the house is built".  Frank was six feet from being flattened by a truck yesterday so he's being kept in at the moment.  I'm looking at making the caravan shed into a cat enclosure so they can have space without dangers.  But it's the same as everything else - if this was our place, the cats would have an enclosure already.  It's like living with a poxy emperor - formulate an idea, present the idea, wait for the idea to gain approval.   Be frustrated generally.

My plant collection is approaching the point where I have to stop because I'm not sure what I have any more.  I've done some garden planning for the new house.  It involves a cat-proof fence so they can wander the garden freely.   What else can I say?  We're sick of living here.  We're not ungrateful, we're just in our early thirties and we want our own place.  There are peaks and troughs of elation and depression when you're waiting for your house to be finished.  It's exhausting.  We're over it. 

Do you ever wonder, will you ever get the carrot?

Some days I feel like I go through life with my arms, my fingers, my fingertips, my entire body outstretched, reaching for something that is always just there, just out of reach.  I can see it.  I can smell it.  I can almost taste it.  I can feel its heat and its light on my hands, but I can't... quite... grab it.

I have absolutely no idea what it is.  I'm not sure what form it will take.  I'm not certain precisely what difference I'm expecting it to make to my life.  But on I go, carrot ahead of me, dangling, calling me on, and on I go, reaching, chasing.

Life is an RPG.  First: I'll finish school.  Next: I'll finish college.  Next:  I'll get a job.  Next:  I'll find a partner.  Next: I'll find a series of partners until I've found the right partner.  (There's plenty of room during this phase to make lots and lots of mistakes, all of which lead you on a little side quest that gives you more experience before you get back to chasing the carrot.)  Driving.  Holidays.  Marriage.  House.  Kids.  Pets.  Any order.  Please tick these off your list as appropriate. 

Those guilty little moments to yourself - those hobby moments - take those moments.  Take them with both hands and hold onto them and hiss and claw at anyone who tries to take those moments away from you.  For me it's cooking, and planning my garden, and tending my plants, and contemplating yet another non-starting novel.  These moments are the singlemost important moments I have. 

If you don't have any, get some.

It's a whole bunch of carrots. 

What makes me happy?

Happiness lies in the pursuit of happiness. 

What a fascinating few weeks it's been.  I've embarked on a new experiment revolving around the concept of never drinking anything that's less than one third your age.  I put all my new found grace aside for a couple of hours and went completely, utterly and totally apeshit (which was a long time coming and made me feel a lot better afterwards).  Tomorrow we have to go and choose all the shapes and colours that are to go in our new house.  I rang the visa people about my visa (which is a temporary spouse visa, but doesn't have an expiry date on it) and they rather chirpily told me they'd forgotten about me. 

And finally, after 14 years on the intermation superwebway, starting off with a chugbucket vax terminal and ending up with me using the internet for everything from grocery shopping to communications to contact lenses to community participation, I came *this close* to being fooled by spam.

I can hardly believe it.  I thought I was savvy.  I really did.  I thought I could spot interweb fraud a mile off. 

In fairness, I was suspicious, and I didn't disclose any of my personal details, but I was still shaken up by a PayPal spam email.  This isn't your usual spam "You have won the lotery! Here in Africa we have $53 billion waiting to be colectted by you.  Please email your credit card details to the national Sengalese lottery board at Lotto_Sen@hotmail.com" type email. 

This email comes from a relatively kosher-looking paypal email address.  It's a html coded email so it comes up with the paypal logo, and the page division the way paypal does their page division.  It tells me PayPal takes its security very seriously, and they believe someone tried to commit fraud on my paypal account on 28th January at 14.35 eastern standard time, or somesuch.  It tells me that subsequently they've frozen my paypal account. 

If I want to reactivate my paypal account, I should go to paypal and log in, and re-enter my personal details.  (Okay, yes, as I'm typing it now I'm sure you're reading it and going "God seriously how stupid are you" but it was CONVINCING.)  Then it suggests I can either go to www.paypal.com, or click directly on this link to bring me into my account details - and then the link WASN'T some shite like "http://digihosting.client/brickwall/dodgyafricandomain/pay-pal/".  It was a convincing url.

It was plausible.

I clicked it.

The fraud page was a work of genius.  Identical to paypal's own site, same user interaction, everything spelled correctly.  Right down to the little hyperlinks at the bottom of the page.  It would be so simple - you enter your username and password and that 'logs you in', bringing you into a screen where you confirm all of your personal details, including your credit card.  The screen is identical to paypal's own user registration screen.

...so I entered a username and password.  Apparently hugehooters@hotmail.com, password donkeydick, is registered for PayPal.  Who knew, eh?

So yes, fascinated by the sophistication of this scheme I was sucked in a little, but only a little.  It makes me wonder, though, about other people.  Like the woman in my place of work who brought in the Senegalese-lotery-winnar-style letter she received at home, with the pretty form that's been printed on cheap paper with a dot matrix printer, where you can write all of your personal details including your "sekurite code" before you post it back to Africa and win precisely 127 gadzillion dollars.  She wanted to know if we thought it was a fraud too. 

("Yes, we think it's a fraud." 
"But are you sure?" 
"...what?  Yes, we're sure." 
"It's just that how did they get my address?" 
"Have you bought a ticket for the lottery in Senegal recently?  No?  It's a fraud." 
"But it's personalised, who would take the time to do that?" 
"If you want to know how sure I am it's a fraud, give me the letter.  I'm going to set it on fire, and then put it out by making you eat it." 
"...there's no need to be like that, I was just asking.")

If you have to ask, then it's a scam.

Whiskey and ginger ale, and it's not even 1pm yet on a Friday.  It isn't a big deal though, it's not as though I'm halfway down the bottle of Jamesons and on my fiftieth cigarette with a death wish.  This is a single post-work drink that I am sipping gently in this sunny afternoon, enjoying both the drink and the fact that it's Friday.

So what news?  What gossip?  What what?  

According to the World Factbook, Australia has 7,617,930 square kilometers of land.  (And another 68,920 sq km of inland water, which explains a LOT.)  That's 7,617,930,000,000 square metres, I think.  But I can't do sums.  I'm open to correction on that.  There should possibly be another ,000 at the end of that number.



I have various other bits of news, but it's been too long since I blogged and I'm not going to continue writing War and Peace here to fit it all in.  I'll just make an effort to blog more often...

Bloggity Blog...

It's been an up and down week.  Eamo's nan died, and while he and his mom were in Adelaide at the funeral, one of the chickens died (not the one with the neurological problem).  It seems to be fated that the chickens will only come to harm on my watch, so after poking the very still chicken where she was not moving from her nestbox, and then swearing at length at her for the inconvenience of her dying while I was the only person home, I donned a set of gloves to remove her little chicken carcass lest it upset the other chickens.

Gone a month, back a month!

Ah how a month off changes things. 

Life in Australia is good.  Through the intervention of Eamo, my office has relocated upstairs to the corner of the spare room.  This is good, because it means I don't get distracted by the half a dozen minor crises that cruise through this house on a daily basis.  I've been a lot better about not requesting deadline extensions for work, and a lot better at getting work done.  Always good, when you're trying to buy a house.