country life

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1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

Somewhere within a 50km radius of where I live, there is a town known as Sussex Inlet. When I was working, customers from that place were always.. how can I put this nicely.. trouble. For example – a lady wanted to return an item she bought from us because it did not match her curtains. The item? An LCD tv set. Now I don’t know about you, but I rarely try to match my electrical appliances with my curtains.

So the other half and I avoided the place because we thought it was a haven for lunatics. Then one day, we took a wrong turn, and somehow ended up there. I have to say once you’ve been there you know why everyone is so loony – the place is amazingly incredible. I go loony just driving around the place. To any Adelaideians reading this – imagine West Lakes, but with crystal clear green colored water. Most of the houses there are waterfront, somehow.

sussex

Of course, like all places in NSW, they have an RSL club, and a bowling club. Soon one of the two will be having an AC/DC tribute band drop past to visit, and all day long today while we were driving, every second song turned out to be an AC/DC song. I think there is some higher force at work, and it wants us to go to the AC/DC tribute show. However it is on a weekend when family will be here to visit so we might not be able to make it. :(

It’s been a long day, more when I have got some decent sleep!

adelaide, country life, electrical appliances, New South Wales

Stunned.

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

You would not believe my Dad.

We went to the pub tonight for the usual meat raffle night. When the other half and I got there Dad’s standing out the front and he says “I can’t get any money out of the ATM, Mum’s put it in the wrong account or something”. So he was standing there waiting for her to go online and transfer it to the right place with the atm slip in his hand – it says insufficient funds, and he’s got the sad face on. “I can’t even get a beer”. The other half gets him a beer, he goes and tries the machine again, he can’t get anything. Mum sent $20 over with the Tamworth boys because that’s all she had on her.

At the end of the meat raffling you put your membership number (or name) on the back of your raffle ticket and then it goes into a barrel and they draw out a number, you win a $20 voucher.

So somewhat prematurely, and because the boys from Tamworth were there and he was explaining how that worked to them, Dad pulls out his membership card and puts his number on the back of their raffle tickets. Then he goes away and starts winning money on the pokies.

I’m sitting there drinking coffee and watching the meat raffle, we win one, then another meat tray. Then they do a membership draw, which is basically all the members numbers and if you’re in the club you win it. The number pops up and it looks familiar, so I look at the back of the tickets Dad wrote on, and it’s his! I jump up to go tell him, he’s in the middle of getting $180 that he won on the poker machine. He goes over and he shows them his card, and that’s $1,600 and change right there.

He takes $10 of the $180 and wins another $130, and while he’s waiting for the attendant to pay the credit then he hears his membership number called out again – he’s also won the $20 voucher he put his number on the back of the tickets for.

He never did manage to get any money out of the ATM, and now he certainly does not need to!

He is always most likely to win. ;)

Aussie Culture, country life, family, pokie machines, yay

No images

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

Blogger is not letting me put images here, which is making me really mad. :(

While I wait for it to fix itself, let me tell you a few things that happened over the past few days. On Thursday we went shopping. We drove about 65kms to go where we wanted to go because the other half had a voucher and that was the nearest shop. We had a lovely hour or two wandering around just choosing various items that we needed, ended up spending $280 of the $300 voucher. Among many other items we bought two fridge door jugs, because I have found the best apple juice on the planet but it does come in these HUGE glass jars which I am a little scared of.

So we drive home, only to find one of them is broken, and not a fixable kind of broken. Normally I check things over before we leave the shop but this was very late in the shopping trip and we were looking for other things, and yeah, I fucked up ;) The jug was worth $10 but now I will put it aside until the next time we go back that way in the hope that I might return it. It might be a few weeks before we go back that way, though. The lesson in this for people moving from the city to the country is, you always have to make sure things are 100% intact and risky free before you leave the store.

So last night some visitors from Tamworth arrived to stay with my parents, and we went out to dinner at the Chinese. Seeing the visitors dressed in Tamworth clothes gave me that one second of home sickness, you probably know the one I mean. If I were to draw it as a painting, it would be a big red heart being squeezed hard by a hand. It’s like you just remembered that you’re missing something important.

Now it makes no sense, because I love where I live now, and I wouldn’t change it. I don’t think I would want to move back to Tamworth. I love the beaches here, and many other things about this place. But you can’t change what is, and it just is, that place will always be where my heart lives. Though I never lived there myself, for longer than two months. ;)

I’m gonna do some more painting today, and watch a little more West Wing, I guess.. :)

country life, Home, shopping

Strawberry Madness

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

Well it’s not Christmas without strawberries in my opinion, so I was looking everywhere for the darned things. All the local grocery stores had them but I would not buy them – they were all yukky and some were even *mouldy!* Eew!

So I said to my Mother the night before that we should go to the Organic Grocery in a town about a 20 minute drive away (coincidentally where my PO box is and where the best pies on the planet are) and she said ok, be ready at midday. Well my sleep patterns were as usual all messed up, and I got into bed about 7am which gave me about 4 hours sleep before I had to get up, and even though I was really tired, I got up with the assistance of Lukas Rossi singing to me.

So I got dressed, walked down the street to the parents house, nobody there. Not even a mouse. So I turned on the TV and waited, and they showed up about an hour later, and then Mum was all “I didn’t say we’d go, I didn’t say midday” and she didn’t want to go but I talked her into it, so she decided we would try another place here in town before we went driving “all that way” (16kms) to the other town!

This from a woman who used to whinge about driving from one side of Tamworth to the other, when Tamworth is half the size of this place. It’s to be expected.

We ended up at this place in town we’d never been to before and I am soooo thankful because not only did they have great, non-mouldy strawberries (which I have a desire to go and eat the whole punnet right now but resist I must) but their other fruit and veg was incredible. I even got cherries, all perfectly the same ripeness. YAY!

Now I just have to make sure she’ll keep going back there, because I am soooo tired of crappy fruit and veg from supermarkets..

Aussie Culture, country life, family, food

Invasion

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

There’s not long to go till Christmas now, and the population appears to be growing. There’s been an explosion of interstate number plates

– Victorians

EEK! no offence to the Vics reading this, I know there’s a few of you, but damn many of your fellow Victorians have absolutely no idea how to drive! The worst ones are the ones with numberplates that say “On the move” because you can bet, they won’t be. Moving, that is. Or, they’ll be trying to move into your car with their car. One almost merged into us today. I usually let out a scream of terror and say “Look, a Victorian, keep off ooooooo” when I see a VIC numberplate.. and the other half knows this means stay well away from that car. ;) I had not seen one for about 8 months. What an idyllic time that was. I forgot how terrifying they were.

– Canberrans

OMG run and hide. Those people live in a state where they have high speed limits all over the place. These people want to get where they are going fast, and they want you out of the way, and they’re happy to run you off the road if possible.

– Queenslanders

SCARY! one drove into our estate today, it was almost enough to make me go looking for the boxes and get packing. You just never know what those people are thinking, but you often suspect they have a hidden stash of guns around somewhere.

– South Australians

RUN AWAY! Hey, I used to live there, I’m happy to say those people have no idea how to merge. And you need to merge a lot here in NSW. NSW people can merge at 80kms an hour. South Australians can’t do it unless the road is clear of other vehicles. That’s not merging, people. That’s something entirely different.

The worst invasion of all is the City People

If this were being made into a movie, they would call it “Invasion of people with carrots wedged firmly in their rear passage” and it would actually be a comedy. The other half and I sat at the petrol (for you Americans, I mean Gas) station for about 20 minutes today laughing at the sitcom unfolding before our eyes.

First, this chick who was probably 50-60 was with another chick of the same vintage. They were in a Subaru Forrester (there’s your first clue right there, a 4wd for people who have no clue!) and they were clearly suffering from the heat – it hit 27 degrees here today whoa evil I was here on a day when it was 45 degrees C, and we went bushwalking, you city people are WEAK!, but they also needed to discuss majorly important issues as one of them pumped petrol all over the side of her car, and herself.

One chick went in to pay, and the other chick picked up the windscreen washer out of the bucket next to the pump, put it aside, and proceeded to tip buggy dirty water all over the side of her car to wash the petrol off. She did not notice the watering can (full of *clean* water and there for the purpose of washing petrol off your car) sitting right next to the windscreen washer bucket.

They had a Sydney City Petersham Subaru numberplate identifier, but I knew they were from the city long before I noticed that, because they were walking around like they’d just been cavity searched, by a guard with really huge hands.

Next, the guy in the car next to us filled up his boat tank with petrol, but forgot to put the lid on before he put it in the car. Petrol went everywhere. That’s a nightmare waiting to happen right there.

Then a guy in a Jeep Cherokee pulled up so far from the petrol bowser pump thing that you could have parked two cars in between the car and the hose thing. He then tried to make the hose reach his petrol tank, which was on the *other* side of the car. He realised it would not work, and then tried to get closer to the pump. It took a good 5 minutes of moving the car around somewhat aimlessly before he managed it.

Shopping is a nightmare, you can’t get a park. Lunchtime is pure evil, because everyone wants to go to little cafes and eat. The shops are open to midnight here, so my strategy for the next two weeks is, if we need anything, we’re going after 8pm.. :)

Australia, city people, country life

Highway Sex Change..

3 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Conversation this morning on Skype with Sephy –

Sephy says: i just took a look at that link you sent me
snoskred says: you did?
Sephy says: since when is it the “princess highway”?
snoskred says: rofl ;)
snoskred says: since they gave the prince a sex change? ;)

The link I sent him was to the Rural Fire Service website about a fire that was close enough I could smell the smoke. It said –

The south bound lane of the princess highway has now been reopened.

The Princes Highway runs right down the South Coast of NSW.

They’re busy fighting fires and stuff, a spelling error is forgiven instantly but still funny. We locals all knew what they meant. And apparently non-locals too, seeing as Sephy is in the US. However he is the exception to the rule, he’s an Aussie In Training. I’d sent him the link last night but he wasn’t online at the time. He often logs in to be bombarded with a page of links and associated babble from me. ;) That’s because we’re not online at the same times since daylight saving started.

When I smelt the smoke, I came back here and logged onto the RFS website right away. What a fantastic service that is, that if you smell smoke you can find out why within instants of clicking onto a website. I’m going to add a list of links to the fire service websites around Australia in my sidebar when I get a chance.

I was going to sleep smelling the smoke and thinking of the poor animals caught in the way of the fire. It’s burnt out a fair chunk of bushland. Here’s hoping many of them got out of the way.

Fire has become quite a fear for me since moving here. Back in Adelaide we never really worried about it. This is a major difference between city and country. I find it’s been on my mind since it started warming up here, and I check the RFS website daily.

Because I’m not a local when I look at the current incidents I often don’t know where they are talking about. I have to look them up on maps.

country life, funny

OH MY GOD!

2 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

A JB Hifi store has opened up less than half an hours drive from this house! So many DVD’s, so little time. I bought 5 today and most were $12.98. YAY! Plus, I got Elizabeth, a DVD I have been looking to get for a while now just nowhere stocks it and Pump Up The Volume which I am very glad to own on DVD but it didn’t seem to have any extras, sadly. I also got Memoirs of a Geisha, The Green Mile, and Goodfellas – yes TT I bought it because you recommended it.

People reading this – if you could choose one movie for me to watch, what would it be? Leave a note in the comments..

We spent the day driving around looking at shops and sights and stuff, then my Uncle cooked us dinner. I really adore him but that man uses too many hot spices in his cooking. I feel this may come back to me as a surprise tomorrow.

Speaking of things coming to one as a surprise, in the back of my parents Voyager the music is a lot louder than anywhere else in the car. Last night I got stuck back there with Abba, which on some songs is absolutely no problem however the songs I don’t know I don’t like very much. Today I took the little car mp3 player with about 24 hours worth of the other half’s and my favourite music, and my Mum got stuck in the back with Nine Inch Nail’s Closer track. I think the lyrics may have come as a surprise, especially the “I want to fsck you like an animal” bit.. :)

Sephy, your latest played track listing hasn’t changed in a few days IIRC – are you listening to enough music right now?

Tomorrow we’re driving down the coast about 150kms or so.. and probably dropping in to the beach with the roos.. but I got to get some sleep I’m just exhausted.

country life, movies

Back in the country..

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

and going back to the city reminds me of all the reasons why I could never live there again. The traffic, the noise, the smells, the krispy kremes.. ;) I tell you, once you move to the country you will never want to go back. It’s scary out there. It’s rained all the way from Sydney to here, which is over 150kms and this is great because we do need the rain.

I keep having plane nightmares. This is not an unusual thing for me, I have always had them. But the last couple have been right out there as far as what happened. The one I had last night I was apparently a plane crash investigator and when we got to the scene we ended up snorkelling (??yeah I agree, what the??) and there were all these weird fish. I blame Meva for that one, at least the snorkelling bit. ;)

But the one that really freaked me out when I woke up from it at 3:30am in the morning a couple of nights ago, it was this airport that was like a posh hotel lobby, and they brought in a coffin which was supposed to be flying on a plane but when the baggage handlers picked it up it was too light so they opened it and there was just someone’s head inside (I blame a book I was reading the other day where someone got decapitated for that one) so they closed it back up and pushed it off to be loaded on the plane and it just exploded like a bomb.

In the meantime I had gone off and got on a plane, and it was like two pictures next to each other – what was happening in the lobby and what was happening on the plane. There were no pilots on my plane and an off duty pilot told someone how to get the plane to take off but that they had to reduce power afterwards. He went back to his seat and fell asleep. When he woke up he looked at the time and the little map and saw the plane hadn’t gone very far, and he realised the engines were too loud so he raced to the cockpit to find nobody there and the engines starting to make strange sounds. He reduced the power right away but then the engines blew up, igniting the fuel tanks.

It was just like a soft, hot wind and the sound the engines made when they exploded was very soothing, and then cut back to me explaining to people on the ground that the people in the air would have only felt a hot wind and they would have been feeling very happy after hearing the sound the engines made when they exploded and then they would not have known anything more. I think that bit has to do with Lockerbie – many of the people were alive the whole time they were falling. Some even survived the landing.

But really I can’t explain my dreams. I do like to write them down because I often forget them easily. So you may find me doing that from time to time here. Don’t hold their strangeness against me! ;)

country life, dreams

As much as I love cows..

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

there comes a point at which you have to wonder, do they love us back? How many sour milks does it take to turn a once great relationship to thanks but no, I’ll take a bottle of water instead?

So I’m at that point now. I’ve bought one too many 600ml flavoured milk drinks that have turned out to be no good. As much as I love drinking it, from now on the only milk I’m drinking is milk in my coffee, or flavoured milk I make myself.

coffee.1

While on the subject of drinks, I have a coffee machine which if you went out to buy a new one today it would be at least $1000 or more. It’s worth every cent when you love your coffee. This machine is great – you press one button and it grinds the coffee, makes the coffee into the little round ground up coffee nugget, pours the water through the ground up coffee nugget and then dumps the ground up coffee nugget into a little bin at the side of the machine. Then you press another button and it gets the steam ready to froth the milk. That bit we do manually but you can get attachments to the machine to do it for you as well, depends how lazy you are.

We’ve had the machine for almost two years now, since Christmas 04. I would hate to think how many coffees it has actually made but not one day has gone by where we have not made one each. This machine has paid for itself roughly 6 times since we bought it, in coffees we have not had to buy.

coffee, country life, cows