Asleep on a Train

Driving the bus thru Wyndhamvale this morning and a huge flock of Sulphur Crested Cucatoos flew passed me and land on some open grass beside the road. It was too good an opportunity to waste so I stopped the bus and took a couple of photos. On the other side of the road three Pink Galahs were being shooed away by three Cookies, and further down the road three Magpies looked on....laughing. Birds...go figure. Small things amuse me...

On my return from NZ, I blew up the dryer, and as I picked it up tout the smoking u.it outside, I burnt my hand. Dee had some magic stuff that fixed it up very quickly, but I have big piece of dead skin on my palm.

Since May, my life has been 'on the go'. After the last FP visit, we had another person visit us, with the the same story, but she was much nicer about our woeful financial position, so Dee and I heard her out. We liked her so much that we invited her back next month for another chat. In the meantime, we have put our block of land up for sale...there goes Dee's dream of a new house for the short term. Our plan is to clear our debts with the profit from the land sale, and then start again with a deposit from what is left over. Dee will have completed her two year limbo with the Tax Office and I shall get a better paying job. We clear on that? While all this was going on, my brother-in-law, Pete Clarkson suddenly died back home in Christchurch. The family flew me back home for his funeral and wake. I was then asked to represent Deb and the family in delivering the eulogy. There was volcanic ash in the skys between Australia and NZ but I flew on Air New Zealand and they ke...

It was as pleasant as going to the dentist, and potentually as expensive. He showed us that we are in dire financial stress and for $650.00, he could show us how to get out from under. I suspected it would involve taking all our income into one line of credit account, which we had had once before and that had got us to where we are now. Once he knew that we had been burnt before, he headed for the hills. Hasta la Vista baby.

... wake up. -Phew! Have a cup of tea. Let the animals out. Let the animals in. Feed the animals. Rinse and Repeat last three items. Have a multi-vitamin tablet (It helps me not get a sore shoulder joint)  Have a shot of Pysllium (Read about it here) Husk in a yogurt or OJ (it helps me do other things during the day :) ) Have a shower - I just can't seem to get started unless I shower. Shave my face - I didn't used to, but my Uncle Earle, who is retired and very old now, does it too and if it is good enough for him, then it is good enough for me. Put on deodorant. Everyone should too. Brush my teeth, those that are still with me anyway Listen to music. I have gathered over 10,000 mp3 files over the past 10 years, covering most of the music I've listened to since I could first hear and process music, so there is always something to listen to. Watch some news - local, national or global, with Foxtel I get to choose what, depending on my mood Read something aspir...

My family has taken a beating in many ways recently. Money is always an issue, but recently we seem to be bleeding more than we can afford to. Health is also an issue and Dee had a little spill the other week that impacted on Money as well Returning from her holiday in NZ, she needed to visit the dentist, who was unable to complete his work on Dee before she went overseas, leaving Dee with an inflected tooth and much pain when she returned to Oz. Of course, the pain came unbearable over that weekend, and the dentist was not available. By the Monday morning, Dee couldn't stand it anymore and struggled up in the wee hours to make herself a comforting 'hottie' Here's where it gets ugly. Just as the jug was coming to the boil and she was filling the "hottie", she felt faint, but failed to put the stopper back in the bottle before collapsing in the pantry. I woke up to find her still laying there perhaps 15 - 30 minutes later. She had burnt her arm and finger...

...get back into a digital life. What I mean is that for the past year, I have been disconnected (in a way) from the 24/7 bombardment of Twitter, Facebook, Skype and the Internet in general. Sure, I've check some of my email accounts on a regular basis, I've used Wikipedia and IMDb to catch up on TV plots and identify actors in certain shows, mainly to show to my family what a smart-arse I can be with the help of the Internet. Haven't we all? It has helped that my HTC 3G Desire kept me connected when I was on the road What I'm referring to is a deep, all-day dive into the Internet, checking out old forgotten songs and bands, using Google maps street-view to check out old family homes in distant countries (the flowers have gone from Chester St, Patea -sigh- where I lived in 1976) But this week I've sat at the computer, Twitter ticking over, Skype showing me my old colleagues logging in and out, LinkedIn doing a similar dance, Gmail filling up then emptying ou...

One of my favourite things at the moment is my set of blue tooth stereo headsets from Plantronics. They are called BackBeat 903 and I brought them on line from Amazon after trying to find another set of my other blue tooth headphones, also from Plantronics. Where to buy them The reasons I like my BackBeats are many, so I'll list a few that leap to mind. 1. I can listen to music (my music) while I'm working , driving the buses. 2. Others cannot hear my music, but they should because I have good tastes. 3. After the first couple of days getting used to wearing them, they are comfortable and I hardly notice them. I can also wear my sunnies (a favourite thing) at the same time. 4. I can stop the music without reaching for my HTC Desire (another favourite thing). In fact, I keep my Desire in my back pack on the bus's dashboard. It is a big dashboard. 5. It has a Poly-Lithium battery and lasts 8 - 10 hours which is about the average shift duration as well, so I can be a...

There are days while driving the buses around Werribee that are stone, as the song goes, and then there are diamonds. The other day for me was a diamond. A bit of background is needed to explain the photo I have hopefully embedded in this article. The car in the photo is a local one. (It is the type most crushed by police for hoonerism) It is driven by an older, redneck biker bogan type person, with no offence directed at any reader who is either older, redneck, biker or bogan, or any combination of the above.  I know all this stuff because this person pissed me off one day by cutting in front of my bus while I was crossing the Werribee Railway tracks on a busy afternoon. That doesn't sound too bad when I write it now, but at the time, if I get blocked on the railway tracks in a 16 meter long bus, with people on board, and a train comes along, it could get messy for everyone. Needless to say, I cursed the driver and I noted at the time that the sign in his rear window made me u...

I'm still devastated by the damage and deaths in Christchurch caused by the aftershocks under Lyttleton  at 12:43pm 22 Feb 2011. Many of the places I grew up around are now piles of rubble, and in some sad cases, tombs. In the September 4th 2010 Earthquake, the one that started this seemingly unending series of aftershocks, the slight personal damage that registered in my mind was of an old cafe that my friends and I used to hang out in while we were meant to be at school. It was in Riccarton Rd and was due for demolition in the 1980's so that earthquake just delivered an inevitable blow. The 2011 aftershock did way more that that. As a child, I prayed and sang at the Blessed Sacrament cathedral. At 12, I was rushed into the CBHS choir (before my voice broke I had a nice treble tone) to sing in the end of year mass held at the ChCh cathedral. I was in awe of the peace inside these old buildings, the calm, coolness created by the soaring ceiling and solid block, thick walls....

P platers who don't giveaway. Trees with branches Dumb passengers

For years now, I've desired to own a BMW X5. Because it is out of my price bracket I came up with the idea that if I was every driving and I ended up between two such cars, it would be a sign from Mr X that I should get serious about buying one. Well today, at 12:20, on Morris Rd outside Macs, while driving bus number 94, one of the haunted Mercedes...it happened. I feel like the time Dee told me that she was pregnant, nervous, exited, happy, frightened about the future and wondering if I could afford such a life change at this stage in my life I managed to raise four wonderful children over the past 30, or so years. Maybe I center own an X5 yet.