Country Snoskred

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A day out..

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Today we went to do a few chores and also for a nice drive through the mountains. I thought I would share a couple of pics from today with you. We went to a lookout at the top of a local mountain and just as we got out of the car we spotted this scratching around in the bushes.

chooky1

chooky2

It is a lyrebird. We’ve seen a few since we moved here and the last time we drove up in the mountains one ran out in front of us, luckily we missed it. Back in our Zoo days we used to sit and eat lunch in front of the lyrebird enclosure and many times we were treated to the amazing mimicry calls from the lyrebird nicknamed Chooky. You could call him and he would turn up, and often launch into his little dance and song. It was very difficult to get a photo of him as the lyrebird prefers to hide in the rain forest, so I am happy we got these shots today. ;) This is a male, the female has a much shorter tail without the beautiful feathers.

animals, country life, photos

Where did they go?

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When we moved house we left a lot of things behind. It was an interstate move and expensive removalist wise, so much junk was thrown out. We’ve been here a year and four months now and just a few weeks ago I found the last of the missing items I couldn’t find anywhere – all my sequins. For your enjoyment, here is a photo of the found sequins. Click the image for a little larger view.

squins

But now it’s turning cold here, and somehow my leggins have gone missing. I think it is redcap‘s fault, because just after I conducted a search for the leggins, I came back here to find this post from redcap in which she says “There’s no reason why I can’t rid the world of skanky footless tights, if I concentrate hard enough.”

The other half agrees with you about leggins – I think he threw all mine out when I wasn’t looking – and in fact so do I really however I like to wear them *under* things (especially jeans when you go fishing or something) when it’s really cold and I had this one pair, they weren’t made out of lycra but a different material which was warm and soft and really comfortable. I bought them sooo long ago that it was back in the days when I lived with my parents which is at least 10 years, and Supre had just one factory outlet in Adelaide, and Supre made decent long lasting clothes for real sized women instead of tiny clothes for skanky ho’s which seems to be the market they are going after these days.

So now I sit here, freezing, with the heater on which is chewing up electricity, and no idea where those leggins have gone.

And even worse, the knowledge that shopping will now have to be attempted to purchase new ones which will never even begin to replace the ones which have quietly vanished. I hate shopping. And I have to get a haircut now that it is so cold. I hate not being able to go to my old hairdresser.

Come back, Leggins, come back..

Moving House, things to remember

Ghostly visions.

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Last night after the usual Chinese dinner, the other half and I chose to drive home via the new town we want to live in, just to see what it is like at nighttime. It was a beautiful night, with a big almost full moon and occasionally fog over the cow pastures. I wished I’d had my camera because the cows were spooky out there in the fog.

When we got to the town we parked in a carpark overlooking the sea, turned off the car, and aah the silence and peace. It was really lovely. I’ve already moved there in my head. I’d heard that often there are kangaroos in the streets at nighttime there though we didn’t see any on our travels through town.

We did the drive like a big round circuit and the drive back to the town we live in now was down a road only recently completed. We drove down that road when we first got to town, it was a dirt road through forest back then and we got the car absolutely filthy. The first part of the road has a lot of reflectors, it’s almost blinding because they are new.

Then out of the darkness at the side of the road, a ghostly vision appeared – it was a very large kangaroo, standing there looking at us. The other half slowed right down – you never can tell what a roo will do, which way it will hop, or even if it will stay perfectly still. The first one did not move.

A little further down the road we saw the second one, again we slowed down. This one looked at us for a bit and then took off away from the road. A bit further down the road we saw a fox standing there. A few more roos, and we were back to the main road. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them at night.

animals, country life, driving

Shopping in the country.

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The other half and I are now spoilt as far as shopping is concerned. But not in the way you might think.

During the day here, it is virtually impossible to go shopping. Cars arrive from all the outlying towns which are say 15km-30kms away in order to shop here, and there simply isn’t enough car parking. Plus, who wants to go in there when there is 50 zillion people all trying to get their groceries? There are long queues for checkouts. It’s pretty much a nightmare.

On Thursday we had to go shopping. We drove to the supermarket, took one look at the carpark and said no way. We’ll make do with what we have, thanks. Unfortunately what we were about to run out of was toilet paper, and that’s kind of a deal breaker. We had enough to survive until the crowds went home, and if we’d been really desperate we probably could have borrowed some from my parents up the street. The Other Half waited until about 8:30 and then he ran to the shops.

See, we have a Coles and a Woolworths. Woolworths is open till 9pm. Coles is open till midnight, and somehow we’d ended up going shopping about 10pm one night. Absolute bliss. Almost no people around, the shelves are being re-stocked so there’s staff in the way a bit but who cares, the place is virtually empty otherwise. So we were shopping at Coles once a week, always after 10pm. Then one night we went to Woolworths at 8:30pm and found they had roast chickens on extreme special. $3 when they are normally over $10. We bought one and I made the other half chicken sammiches. He was thrilled. I was happy because there were nice chicken bits in the fridge to eat. We were both happy because woolworths shopping was a lot cheaper.

But like anything, there is no perfection in this world. Woolworths do not stock some of my favourite items. Coles do not stock some things that Woolworths stock. So we generally have to go to both to get what we really want.

So the truth is, we’re spoilt for daytime shopping. I’d rather eat tinned food out of the cupboard than be forced to go when every man and his dog is there.

Last night I got a sorbet of magnificence. It is stunning. :)

There may be an art post coming up. Maybe.

country life, shopping

My heart is broken.

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Yesterday was an absolutely glorious day. The Other Half and I went to a few places to have a walk on the beach. The last place we went is in the new town that both of us really want to live in and it was a place we drove past last time but didn’t stop. It’s more interesting than a normal beach, it has mangroves and a big wooden bridge across them, so you can stand there and look at the little crabs doing what little crabs do.

crabs

There were little fish in the stream which was running out of the mangroves, the stream was a funny color because it had rained, and the fish were eating little bits of food coming to them as a surprise

fish

The tide was out, and you could walk out for miles along rocks and sand. And we did, we spent over an hour walking there, just soaking it in, looking in rockpools, finding hidden beach life. It was so peaceful. Absolute, utter silence. It was incredibly incredible.

bay1

As we were leaving we noticed that one of the houses we’d looked at was maybe 3 houses away from where we actually had been. I began to imagine a new life, beach walks twice a day, peace, silence, no screaming kids. The house was listed as having three bedrooms and a rumpus room. There’s only two of us but we have a lot of stuff. We live in a four bedroom now. It looked like it would be big enough, and though the bricks were a little dark I said to the other half, why don’t we go to the real estate agent and see if we can have a look?

And so we did. Half an hour later we pulled up out the front of the house. The real estate lady was there waiting and already had the house open. It had screen doors (something we really miss now) and we went inside to a quite dark room which would have been the lounge. Then up a couple of steps to the hallway which ran the length of the house. At one end of the hallway there was a giant wood fire and another living area. Then it had a kitchen and dining. The kitchen was fairly old and country style, but I liked it. Mentally, I was already moving in boxes.

The bedrooms were somewhat small. It had one bathroom. As we walked back towards the laundry I said, so where’s the rumpus? The real estate lady said – it’s out the back, but you don’t get access to it, it belongs to the owner and he stays there on weekends, holidays, that kind of thing. Hmm. Not brilliant news, but I’m still prepared to accept compromises I guess. Then we go outside, and there is no undercover area for a bbq or outdoor setting (we have both) except the owner has one attached to the rumpus, which we wouldn’t be able to use. There was no garage, either.

After we’d been in the house we were standing out the front and all you could hear was the trees and parrots flying past and I just really wanted to live there. Even if the owner stayed out the back from time to time. Even if we didn’t have a garage. Even if we had to give the pool table to my parents to make it work. My mother would be furious, she spent years trying to get rid of a pool table, but maybe I could talk her into it. The idea of beach walks, maybe two minutes walk away, whenever I felt like it.

All the way home both of us tried to figure out how we could make it work. I could almost hear Tim Gunn from Project Runway in my head “Make it work!” but no matter how we sliced it, there was no way us and all our stuff and our two cats could fit in that house. It didn’t have Austar. It didn’t have a broadband connection. We probably could have those fitted, and if there was a rumpus in which to put the pool table we would have explored it. But there wasn’t.

I was really pretty tired, I’d been up for 24 hours trying to put my body clock back onto schedule. We got home and it was just after 4pm, and then those kids across the road started up screaming and playing and yelling, and The Other Half came in and said to me “It’d be worth getting rid of half of our shit just not to hear those kids anymore”.

It didn’t hit me till I got up this morning and was chatting to Sephy online and telling him about the house. My heart is broken. :( It’s like a new version of life was coming towards me, stretching out its hands, and at the last minute it turned around and went the other way.

We’re just going to have to be patient. What we want will turn up. We have to believe that. And now I’m going to be more pro-active – I’m going to get in touch with all the property managers there and let them know what we’re after. But today I feel really grumpy. :(

house hunt, Jervis Bay, mistakes I made

Scary Shark.

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Last night when we went to the usual Saturday night Chinese, there was a big group of people out on the boat ramp which can be seen from the restaurant. We weren’t really sure what was going on, until they started using this winch which holds up a big fish you’ve caught. They’d caught a Mako shark, about three metres long. It was huge!

So this is bad for many reasons, the worst of which is it reinforces my fear of sea water to go swimming in. I blame my parents for allowing me to see Jaws at an early age. And I felt sorry for the shark, because he/she probably was just out there minding its own business when it got hooked by these people. A 40 minute struggle (the other half went out to find out more about what happened) followed by two large hooks into the side of the fish because they couldn’t get it into the boat. It wasn’t humanely killed. I’m not sure how you humanely kill a shark. I guess you don’t.

But I think since swimming in the sea I have gained a new respect for fish. They’re not the stupid little creatures people make them out to be. I find it more difficult to eat them now.

The Chinese owner went out and talked them into giving him the shark fins, he gave them a couple of bags full of Chinese food in return.

animals, country life, food

Let it rain..

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It’s been raining since about 2pm yesterday. It’s good for many reasons, one of which being it is keeping the screaming kids inside. The peace is a welcome change.

Yesterday the other half had a work thing on and he had to go to Wollongong, he didn’t get back until after 10. So I got stuck into some baiting work I had to do and really got a lot done.

I have this check scammer at the moment who sent me a check, and I now am trying to make him snap. I told him his 30 grand was stolen out of my kitchen cupboards by a burglar. I was trying to talk to him on the phone and he kept hanging up, so I started calling him nasty words. He kept saying it was the network (and it probably was) but I don’t care.

So then I told him that the police got the money back and now I’m not sending any of it, I bought me a nice big boat. He’s still being polite to me trying to get me to send the money. I’ll keep pushing and hopefully he’ll break and curse me and give me death threats.. :)

It’s getting cold, and I feel blah. I think I’m getting yet another cold.

scambaiting, weather

Metallica is scary..

2 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

So, Saturday the people across the road and their kids spent two hours out on their front lawn playing sport of some kind, and along with it went two solid hours of constant yelling, screaming, shouting, crying, and various other annoying noises. I’m not joking when I say solid, they did not shut up once, and it was so loud I think the kids must have hurt their throats.

Apparently not, because on Sunday they were back for two hours more. And I was actually trying to sleep at the time, because I’d woken up with a headache from hell and spent the rest of the day trying to get rid of it by sleeping it off.

You can bet two hours of them yelling and screaming did not go down well with me. They’re lucky I didn’t go out there in my sleeping attire and do some yelling and screaming of my own.

Monday, the school bus got home, and within one minute the kids started yelling and screaming. Within ten minutes the whole family plus some extra random kids from around the neighborhood were out there. I still had a dull version of the headache from the day before, and tried to drown them out with a movie. One hour and forty minutes later, I snapped.

I stormed into the kitchen and grabbed the Metallica DVD that we have. I took it into the big lounge with the big stereo system (that I never turn up over 25) and loaded it in there. Enter Sandman. I turned the volume up to 10 and went into the kitchen to get some headache tablets.

When I got back just three minutes later, the subwoofer had danced across the floor all by itself, there’s some vicious drumming in that song, and when I looked out the window, there was nobody to be seen. Probably they all ran inside to read their bibles and hide from the satanic music. I think all the other neighbors were actually thrilled and possibly inspired as to how to get rid of them next time.

Later that evening we were summoned to my parents house, probably 800-1000 metres away. I told my Mum what I’d done, and she said “That was you?” damn, it must have been loud. ;)

And today, thankfully, no screaming people. If they come back, it’ll be Metallica in 10 minutes next time. It’s just so inconsiderate to make so much annoying noise. I rarely make any noise here, the stereo is always at a reasonable level and I go outside to make sure it isn’t too loud that it would annoy anyone.

They only got 5 minutes of how much noise I’m happy to produce on a regular basis if they want to keep it up. Plus if they really upset me, my parents have the subwoofer of champions just down the street which I could borrow. ;)

I really love Metallica, by the way, everything up to St Anger, and I think many of their songs are true classics. It’s even better when you watch the film clips. But the choices are not limited to that. I think a bit of Marilyn Manson might really freak them out. It makes one wonder, what music would I need to play in order to inspire them to move out completely?

Angry Snoskred, move to the beach, music, noise

Snorkel Wakeup Call

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The other half is on holidays, so this morning we got up at a reasonable hour to go snorkelling.. here

snorkel

The water was crystal clear and it was high tide, there were heaps of fish around, and the sun was not out due to gathering thunder clouds, so nobody got sunburnt. It was brilliant. We’re going again tomorrow. And the next day and the day after that. Well, maybe not because that’s the weekend and it’ll be busy there, but most of the days of next week, for sure. It’s free, and good exercise, and the only downside is the smell of new wetsuit that doesn’t seem to go away even if you have a few showers. ;) But it’s ok, I can deal with that.

Jervis Bay, snorkelling