Author: Snoskred

Something Different

2 Comments Posted on December 8, 2017December 7, 2017 by Snoskred

Many places held a bit of a Christmas shopping night this past Thursday, with nibblies, bubbles, free gift wrapping, live music, and an atmosphere of happiness. We dropped into a local shop, and then to Aldi to pick up mushrooms for a late pizza dinner.

We are hosting Christmas this year in our delicate nirvana. While in the first shop I had mentioned to The Other Half that I wanted a cheese board. The first shop did not have one, but Aldi had.. well.. something quite unusual.

I rarely buy anything glass but this was quite special and just $24.99.

If you like it maybe drop into your local Aldi – they had a few other awesome things. I wish I’d seen the marble knife set, might have to drop back and grab that.. I get the Aldi catalogue delivered to my email address, so I can always search it to find out what time last year they had certain things I am wanting to get.

The food covers which went on sale Dec 24th 2016 – which we did not need back then but definitely need now – should be placed out in special buys on December 23rd, if they stick to the schedule. I bought some teal ones for my Mother last year. I hope they have teal again this year!

The box has already been repurposed as a Kitty Haven.

Home

Delicate Nirvana Part 2 – 4Kitties

6 Comments Posted on December 4, 2017December 27, 2017 by Snoskred

One of the main reasons we wanted to build a Queensland Room was for the kitties to have a safe outside space they can visit when we are not at home. This is still our intention but we are not quite there yet, obviously the panels with shade cloth to screen the room in are still a future plan right now. Until they are built, outside time is mostly still supervised.

I say mostly because we do have surveillance cameras out there, and if we need to go inside and do a chore or task, either one of us can fire up the cameras on our phone or tablet and keep an eye on these occasionally bad kitties. I cleaned the toilets while Grumpy remained napping outside, we’ve emptied and filled the dishwasher, cooked dinner, and various other things.

Mainly the kitty to keep an eye on is Happy, because she likes to pretend stalk and chase the chickens, who are just one tantalizingly thin chicken wire fence away from her. Grumpy does not chase the chickens. She likes to watch them and have conversations with them, but she does not stalk and chase.

We are not concerned with their escaping the yard. Our kitties are not jumpers. Grumpy cannot jump up onto our bed, she pulls herself up with her front paws and claws. While Happy is able to jump, she generally does not like to jump anything over 1 metre tall. She is able to get over the fence between the yard and the shed/mancave area.

So what makes our delicate nirvana = kitty nirvana? Plenty of cardboard boxes placed in strategic positions. A lot of box swapping goes on as you can see in the first two photos of this post – same box, different kitty. But they have many boxes to choose from and you see here just a small selection of those –

Plenty of kitty friendly chair sleeping options –

The ability to watch chickens from the boxes and chairs – and for humans the ability to watch all of these –

A large water container for kitty drinking at the perfect height so kitties do not have to bend down at all – turns out the Christmas lights containers are perfect for this purpose –

Cat grass specially cultivated for kitty use –

A kitty door so they can come and go as they please without filling the house with flies and mosquitos –

Coming soon will be some shelves purpose built for kitties to climb on, and maybe a custom built kitty tower or two.

Delicate Nirvana, Home, kitties

What Is It?

5 Comments Posted on December 1, 2017November 30, 2017 by Snoskred

Anything in this shade of green stops me in my tracks, but in this case it took me a little while to work out exactly what I was looking at. Shades of teal green are my favourite as well as a great favourite of my Mother.

I very nearly bought it for her for Christmas, but it turned out to be $77. It is quite large, so I can justify the cost. However I cannot justify buying her random glass items just because they are her favourite colour, or because they are something I might love to own. ;)

shopping

The Oldbies

2 Comments Posted on November 29, 2017November 28, 2017 by Snoskred

Writing about the older girls always makes me worry I am putting a jinx on them somehow. But they deserve their moment in the sun just like the new girls.

Lizzy

Lizzy was recently at the top of the pecking order – she seems to have been overthrown by Dark Comb now – and she is truly the mean girl of our chook yard. If she were human I would have nothing to do with her.

I understand why she is the way she is – anyone who has watched Wentworth or Orange Is The New Black knows you don’t get to be “top dog” by just chilling out and eating bon bons while your fellow chickens fan you with fern fronds. You have to work hard to be Top Chicken, and that means chasing the other girls away from the treats by pecking at them – though generally she never makes contact.

Lizzy can also be pretty nasty when she is broody, there are times when I have had to use a stick to push her out of the nesting box because she has pecked at me, but there are also times when I am able to pick her up and remove her with no trouble.

Kitty

Kitty is Lizzy’s sister – they are both Pekins – and presently third in the pecking order. She also rules with an iron fist but slightly less meanly than Lizzy does. The two of them have been broody for a while now which does give the other girls a break from their beaks, and when they are not broody the newbies have been broody.

Both Kitty and Lizzy were brought up with Twiggy who had serious nutritional deficiencies – this we discovered when we sent Twiggy for necropsy as we were concerned about respiratory symptoms she’d had. Both these girls are not expected to live as long as a normal chook due to that – the damage was done before I knew them and it cannot be repaired now. However I suspect their diet since arriving here has helped them somewhat, and I do hope they will be with us for a while longer. Their time with us will involve as many treats as they can enjoy and they will be nutritionally excellent treats.

Dark Comb

If I were allowed to have a favourite, Dark Comb would win that competition hands down. This chicken! Where do I even begin to explain all the awesomeness of this chicken? I do not believe there is a combination of words that will express it. She makes me laugh all the time, then she makes my eyes water thinking about how she is the last girl of our original flock still standing and how our time together is now limited. She is nearly 8 years old. That is like 100 in human years. There will come a day when she is no longer with us and just typing this is causing salt water to form in my eyes.

She loves blueberries more than, well, anything else on the planet. She also likes watermelon, spinach and strawberries, but if I arrive at the back door with the blueberry container she runs up to greet me and it is the cutest thing. I will have to try and get The Other Half to capture it on video.

She is extremely friendly to humans and loves to be near us. I think she believes we are her flock and if the rest of the chooks are out free ranging she will sometimes ignore them in order to be near us. If we are not in the yard she likes to sit or stand on the windowsill near Dust Bath Central where she can look in the house and see what we are up to.

It has surprised me greatly that she now is Top Chicken. I’m not sure whether it is because four of the newbies are broody right now, or whether it is because Lizzy and Kitty have recently returned from a long stretch of broodiness, or whether it is because 6 out of our 8 chickens are now English Game Hens, or if she just convinced them all to accept her as the leader. She is the only chicken to be found on the inside roost at night now. She does not rule in a mean girls way, more in a “I am your leader and therefore all the best treats are for me” kind of way.

She does spend more time sitting down chilling than she used to, especially on hot days. I try very hard not to completely freak out at this. As long as she fronts up anytime I appear with the blueberry tray, I will be happy.

Here is Dark Comb with her two English Game Hen duckwing sisters when they first arrived in Cluckingham Palace. Red Comb and Purple Comb sadly went to Rainbow Bridge in 2015/2016 and are now both buried in the garden near the lemon tree – . All of our girls at Rainbow Bridge are much missed but especially the last three as we had them the longest, that is Rosie, Red Comb and Purple Comb.

So every moment with Dark Comb is extra precious now, and she does get specially spoiled with blueberries. She knows me well enough when the blueberries are being fed, I will throw some off in another direction to send the other girls running, then drop a couple near my feet just for her.

Chickens

Delicate Nirvana Part 1

6 Comments Posted on November 27, 2017December 27, 2017 by Snoskred

Our delicate nirvana aka backyard Queensland room project is almost completed. We only have one final step which is screening in the room, and we will likely tackle that on upcoming weekends around Christmas and the New Year due to the tourist invasion due to hit from mid-December onwards.

We bought two sets of LED fairy lights from Aldi, and one set of LED blue icicle lights. At 16.99 a set these were very reasonably priced, but they might have an even better deal coming up this week if you are looking for a set of fairy lights.

Delicate Nirvana was born thanks to our love of Seinfeld. George Costanza has a rant about “delicate genius” which is one of my favourite moments of that show ever.

GEORGE: I love these people, you can’t ask ’em questions. (getting excited) They’re so mentally gifted that we mustn’t disturb the delicate genius. Unless it’s in the confines of an office. (worked up) When huge sums of money are involved, then the delicate genius can be disturbed!

We mustn’t disturb the delicate nirvana. :)

Delicate Nirvana, Home

Zoo Friday

Posted on November 24, 2017November 21, 2017 by Snoskred

This is a tree shrew. It is difficult to photograph these speedy creatures, but sometimes this one would strike a pose for us.

zoo

The West Wing Weekly Podcast

Leave a comment Posted on November 22, 2017November 21, 2017 by Snoskred

From left to right – cast members of The West Wing – John Spencer, Martin Sheen, Mary McCormack, Richard Schiff, Joshua Malina.

Look at that photo. Look at it a little bit longer. It will eventually hit you. Do you see it? :) If you don’t I will mention what it is further down in the post.

If you are in any way a fan of The West Wing, you really need to get listening to this podcast. I have mentioned this podcast here before but today I really want to shout out loud about it, because they are doing some live shows – most of which are already sold out, however more live shows may appear and you might want to add the podcast on your Facebook and Twitter so you can keep in the loop about upcoming events.

I know for a lot of us in Australia, we were truly mucked around by Channel Nine when it came to viewing The West Wing. I know I gave up on trying to watch it thanks to their terrible scheduling problems. I do remember seeing episodes scheduled for prime time air way past midnight.

So once the entire series had been released here on DVD, I bought it and watched it all, finally the one in charge of what episodes I watched and when. You can do this too! The complete series – that is all 7 seasons – is now just $84 at JB Hifi.

I’ve probably seen the entire series in full at least 10 times now, at least once a year it gets pulled out for a rewatch, and I usually managed to catch it on Foxtel from time to time. Most of the episodes I know very well.

I do recommend that you watch the episode first then listen to the podcast for that episode. They now have a handy episode index. If you like you can also team this up with the excellent West Wing Episode Guide, which has some interview snippets and a bit more info.

So what is wrong in the photo, did you see it?

The Untied States Of America. There are some who might say this was perhaps a prediction of some kind. ;) This error was fixed before filming. Lucky someone spotted it!

The West Wing

Take That Live

3 Comments Posted on November 20, 2017November 19, 2017 by Snoskred

Regular readers of the blog may recall that I am a huge Take That fan. After booking the tickets for Take That back in April, I made a Take That CD for the car which contains nearly 50 of their songs including my 5 favourite Take That songs. That is the only music I have listened to in my car ever since.

A good friend of mine who is originally from the UK wanted to go to the concert and of course so did I, so we made plans. I booked the tickets something like 5 days earlier than everyone else could buy them via a Telstra offer, I forget the exact details. Because the concert was in Sydney which is a couple of hours drive from here, we booked a hotel in Parramatta.

Then life went on but with the added bonus of knowing November 17th 2017 would be Take That Day. I last saw Take That live in concert on the 25th of September 1995, so it has been a long wait for me. My friend lived in the UK until 6 years ago. She was lucky enough to go to a lot of their concerts there. On Thursday I prepared with a manicure –

We headed up to Sydney around midday on Friday, planning an early burger at Grill’d and a stop at Gelato Messina which was very close to the hotel. So close I could see it from our hotel room window. I feel like this was a secret message to me. ;)

For anyone who is not living in Sydney, the transport system can be terrifying. I grew up in Adelaide where things were relatively simple, there were only 4 train lines and all you had to worry about is what platform your train is leaving from and does it stop at your station.

I did some research beforehand and all my research told me we had to go to Lidcombe but when we checked in we asked to make sure and we were told it was Strathfield we needed to change trains at. When we got to the train station we could not see anyone to ask, so we went with the information we’d been given at the hotel but it was wrong. Lucky we had gone early, even with this diversion we made it to Qudos Bank Area with miles of time to spare and plenty of time to purchase merchandise.

I saw this hoodie on Twitter some months ago, a fan had posted a photo of it. I loved it and asked how much it had been – 70 pounds was the answer. Currently that should make it around $122AUD – I was expecting it to be somewhere around $150. But it was $100, so I bought it. And they had a lovely sparkly diamante band logo tee shirt which I bought and immediately went to the bathroom and changed into it. Because I love sparkly things and I love that logo.

Then we headed to our seats, which were super duper excellent. It was the weirdest thing, because I had an aisle seat and there were maybe 6 seats on our side of the aisle, then it went into a large section of people on the other side. Exactly like you see at the right hand side of the above photo, people, then a large dark space which is the aisle.

Our side was all people who booked early the same as we did, so I guess you would call us the “super fans”. On the other side of the aisle were people who were not super fans like we were. Some of them remained in their seats for the entire show and did not appear to sing along at all.

On our side of the aisle, there was a LOT of dancing, singing, and even occasional screaming when our favourite band member ventured over to our side of the stage. I did not sit down in my seat once after the band took to the stage, nor did my friend.

Fitbit was not quite sure what to make of all this. I would dearly love to know what songs were playing when I did 12 minutes of outdoor biking.

There’s my favourite, Mark Owen. Not only were we close to the boys themselves but also to the video screen so we had a great view of everything. One thing I love about these lads, they are not scared to sparkle and sequin it up.

I believe Sam from The Annoyed Thyroid was somewhere in the above photo. She was meant to see Take That in Newcastle, only that concert was cancelled. I hope you had just as great a time as we did!

And we did have a most excellent time both at the concert, back at the hotel where we indulged in some pink champagne before bedtime to celebrate our happy evening and then a lovely buffet breakfast the next morning. We then dropped into Costco and IKEA on our way home, because that is how we roll.

Take That, travel

Zoo Friday

Posted on November 17, 2017November 10, 2017 by Snoskred

I have no idea what kind of bird this is, sorry! ;)

zoo

T-shirts At Last

4 Comments Posted on November 15, 2017November 15, 2017 by Snoskred

On a recent trip to Canberra I thought we would go to the Canberra Outlet Centre and try to find some t-shirts that actually fit me. This was a bit of a mistake on my part because it involved dragging The Other Half around a lot of stores which created frustration on his behalf on my behalf, if that makes any sense. I was annoyed that I was not finding anything and he was annoyed that I was annoyed.

After trying countless womens departments which were all an epic fail – the sleeves are far too short – I decided to try a few menswear places and we ended up in Factorie, a store I had never been in before in my lifetime but it reminded me a lot of Cotton On and I discovered later they are a part of the same company. I found a few t-shirts that looked like the sleeves would be an ok length and more importantly the material was not too thin, plus they were quite long even in the medium size, so I tried them on.

I wasn’t sure whether the length of time we’d already spent looking had worn me down to a nub but I thought these would do for around the house, so I bought two for $25. The next day I wore one of them and fell in love, so I went to the website where I discovered I could get a whole lot of them for $4.95 each. Free shipping was $50 so I splurged and bought 10 t-shirts – one being $9.95 to take me over the $50.

I do not know on what planet some of these can be considered menswear. The curved tail tee is super long on me, ending up somewhere mid-thigh. The colours are mostly pastel shades. They are very soft and comfortable and perfect for around the house. I’ve got enough to last the summer now and a couple of them are good enough to wear out if necessary.

This was the most expensive of my order online buys – the shaded angle t-shirt for $9.95

I will be keeping an eye on their clearance section because I saw these gorgeous tie dyed tees in store and while I do not want to pay $24.95 for them, I will be happy to pay under $10 for them at a later time.

shopping