Wordless Wednesday
Category: House, Garden and Dogs
The Big Adventure.
Ok, that’s the second run to Adelaide over now we just have the five day trip to Melbourne and back. I am so looking forward to the Tattoo. In nearly 65 years the Edinburgh Military Tattoo has only moved out of Edinburgh four times and three of these time have been to Australia. I have never been to the Australian event – this will be a first time. We are, as I said earlier, going via the
Great Ocean road. Our first run on Friday will be from here to Mount Gambier. The boys will do in one run what I generally take two to do – overall about 1000klms. But then as Herself suggests, there is nearly 30 years of a difference :o)
At the moment Windows 10 is still causing me heartache. I spent some time with a Microsoft Guru who was very helpful and finally got Word, Outlook, Excel, Power Point and Publisher all working – fantastic. Still have problems in that the start/menu button is still not working on windows 10 and I cannot access the apps – which means that although these programs are working I can’t quite get to them because I can’t get into the applications folder – grrrr… Not only that, my computer refuses to recognise my printer – they wont talk to each other. I am not altogether sure why but I seem to spend a lot of time these days humming Trini Lopez (If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning) It is definitely a true saying “To err is human – but to really stuff up you need a computer”
Benji got a severe talking to the other day as I tried very nicely to impress on him that wakening up and pouncing on a sleeping form at 04:20 does not a happy daddy make. :o) Must have worked
because the last two mornings I have slept until 6am – thank you BJ. This five days away to Melbourne is going to be fun. The poor dog went gaga when I came home from Adelaide and that was only overnight — how is he going to be after five days? This will be the longest time I have been away from him since he was rescued and brought home. The longest I have been away from him was two days and Herself tells me he just sulked in his bed only coming out to go out and to eat. Yes, of course I will miss him.
I am looking forward to the Tattoo and some shopping afterwards. We set back to home on Monday – overnight in Adelaide and home sometime on Tuesday morning. Herself has also been having problems with her computer but rather than upgrade ( it is an old computer) so when we get to Adelaide we are going to have a look around and see what we can find.
Anyway we leave in two hours so I had better start getting showered and things ready. I am taking the camera (of course) and the laptop with me and we’ll see how we go.
Wordless Wednesday
If you hate Windows 10, clap your hands!!
Two things this morning 1st is that Benji and I went back to our original walking route and covered the necessary steps and the 2nd thing is that the landscape people came this morning and cleared the whole of the front and graded the area. Now that all the bark and the weeds with it, as well as the horrible plants (which I had nothing to do with) are gone, the place looks much cleaner. However, now that it’s back to bare earth, I’ll have to go out and throw a spray of water about the place to keep the dust down. When I get back from Adelaide on Monday I’ll get weed matting cover the area in that and put down 20mm river stone across the area. I may very well get two half barrels – one at each end and use them to plant flowers. If I get the boys to help me move some very heavy stone for the bottom and between that and the potting mix it should be too heavy for anyone to move.
John and I did go down to Adelaide and we both got things we wanted. Since we came back, however, the weather has taken a turn for the worse and we have had lots of rain and high wind. Even as I am writing this- it’s chucking it down outside. We just got back in from our morning walk and down it came. We were lucky.
Much of the work I had completed in the back garden is ruined because I had been relying on ” normal” summer weather and made no attempt to fully protect the floor boards I had laid down for the flooring. My next thing was to install the overhead roofing but only after the boarding had been completed and I had a stable platform for the ladder to rest on. This weather is not generally expected at this time of year. Yes I did cover the work in tarpaulin but the high wind saw to that and the rain did the rest. I took Benji out walking last night and I really don’t know who was the crazier – him for wanting to go out in the rain or me for grabbing a brolly and taking him.
Serious flooding all around us – Port Lincoln has had serious flooding and roads in the far north of the state have been cut off; Adelaide has had serious flooding and the roof of a supermarket collapsed with the weight of the water. Welcome to summer…
At the moment the internet is the only thing that is working on my computer – everything else has crashed. The new Office 2016 has major problems and has been crashing , which is good because it joins the crashing of the bug infested Windows 10. Printers are no longer working and can’t be reinstalled because they are now not compatible with Windows 10. At the moment I am using an Apple Laptop but the files that I need are on the PC and I can’t get at them, so I telephoned the Clerk and asked him if he woud be good enough to have all the papers printed for me for the meeting on Saturday. Not a problem. I don’t know what to do at the moment, whether I should wait things out until Microsoft get their act together and get these problems sorted out or abandon the PC altogether and go over to the dark side – Apple-iMac.
Wordless Wednesday
Wordless Wednesday ( Found Recently)
An unexpected Adventure!
Sunday – apart from church – is family day and in the evening the family all come over to our house and share dinner together. Last night, however, was special for me. Although my birthday is not until April, the family – Annabell, John, Andrew, Patrica and the Girls – decided on an early Birthday Gift. In February my boys are taking me to Melbourne to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. A reconstruction of the front facade of the Castle is being built in Ethiad Stadium in Melbourne and the permanent staff from Scotland will be coming over. I am so looking forward to this – the Pipes and Drums of the Royal Scot Dragoon Guards. They (the family) all know that I have a great fear of flying so we are driving there and the boys want to go via the Great Ocean Road, which means I will get back to the Memorial Arch but this time I have will my photograph taken with each of the boys. This is the area where there was a deadly fire a few months ago but it has now been cleared for travel. We should also make time to stop at Bell’s Beach. Isn’t it interesting that I am already creating photographs in my head and what I want to do.It would be really neat to make a detour to Drysdale and see what’s happened to my Sister’s property, but I don’t think we will
have the time for that. The Edinburgh Military Tattoo is just magic and I will have to contain myself until the week after I come back from Presbytery, which, fortunately, is in Adelaide this time.
Apart from the Tattoo, this will be the first time in years that the boys and I have been away someplace together – so I am quite looking forward to that. Of course it’s four days that I will miss Benji and I will miss our splashing around at the beach. He will miss his hotdog reward, but I’ll make it up to him. It wont take us long to get back on track. However, it is going to be an interesting start to the month – Adelaide this coming weekend – Adelaide the weekend after – Melbourne the week after that. Yes, Benji will think I’ve abandoned him.
Benji and I tried out a new walking route this morning. Interesting but turns out to be over 1000 steps shorter than our current route. Since today is a public holiday ( Australia Day) I might drive round the route and see where I could make a detour to make up the additional steps. If you’re interested it is calculated to be 1320 steps per kilometer and Benji and I cover about 12500 steps per day which is about 5.7 miles or 9.5 kilometres and we do this every day. I realise this to professional walkers, this is probably just a warm up, but it’s a lot for the dog and me – 50+ klms per week.
At this point I wrote some thoughts on Australia Day and deleted them. Better to let the so called elites of society have their say because at midnight I think they turn back into pumpkins. I just have to say though, I love the way some Australians get elected as “Australian of the Year”and use the opportunity not to celebrate their achievements but to tell the rest of us what a racist, guilty of religious discrimination lot we are. For me – well I often think of Sir Walter Scott “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”
O Caledonia! stern and, wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e’er untie the filial band,
That knits me to thy rugged strand!
Still, as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still
Even in extremity of ill.
By Yarrow’s streams still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way.,
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither’d cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot Stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The Bard may draw his parting groan.
Wednesday – with words
The Best Laid Plans………….
12th January 2016
It had been my intention to depart quietly and without fuss, but in the words of Robert Burns “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley ( go often astray) and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy” Close enough I guess. I believed that after four years this wasn’t really going anywhere so the sands of time had brought it to the end of its road. Well, that was what I intended but it didn’t quite work out that way. Unlike ID4 I was going to go quietly into the night, but someone whom I greatly respect convinced me otherwise. Even if no one responds, it’s still
worth doing
Since December the weather has been very mixed with hot days – very hot days, fry an egg on the roof of the car days and days when it has been cold and windy. At the moment it’s up around the low 40c with a high fire danger tomorrow and strong Southerly winds and total fire bans in 11 of the 15 fire districts. So far we have been fire free for the time being – not so Western Australia and a deadly fire which is still burning. With the strange – hot-cold-hot-dry – weather we have been having lately I think most fire controls areas are on edge. We are not really in a fire prone area but part of our district is so we come under the extreme fire danger / fire bans. Temperature today 44.3. A fire on Kangaroo Island and another smaller fire in the south
Since I have been home Benji and I spend some of our evenings either at the Wetlands or at the beach. The last few nights have been windy and the water choppy so no splashing about. Today the weather was hot and calm so we could have gone to the beach and into the water but the boys and I have been clearing out the lounge in preparation for the new carpet to be delivered and laid. Herself picked out the carpeting four years ago and it was an off white colour. Was fine for a while until The Man took ill and then Chienne became ill- so, we need new carpeting. And yes, we did clear out all the furniture and brought in a professional cleaner, but whilst it did clean it some, it did illustrate that off white was a bad choice :o)
At the start of last week I ordered a new Planner/Organiser from a company in the Netherlands. A day or so after ordering and paying I was notified that it had been sent on Wednesday 6th Jan. The package – all the way from Rotterdam – arrived this afternoon. I have had packages that have taken longer to come from Melbourne, so I have to say that I am very impressed. I have been fairly busy today and I’m a bit squashed up until the furniture gets put back, so I have to contain myself and open it in the morning. I bought two new Coffee Mugs. Didn’t come up too well on the photograph, but you should get the idea; the Text is “Benji the Wonder Dog”
This week I will call the yard clean-up people back again and have the whole of the front cleared. I have decided that the woodchips cannot be saved, so we will clear the lot. Once that’s done I’ll give thought to what I am going to replace it with once I have put in new edging. Will take a while but I hope it will be worth it. Last year I made mention of weeds – everywhere and there are reports that the Flinders Ranges National Park and surrounding areas are infested with weeds. The wet then dry and hot have created conditions for an upsurge in weeds – even around here. This week has been a good example of this in that the temperature rose to 44c then collapsed and it has been cold and windy ever since. This morning I had track pants and a jacket ( should have had a heavier one) when I took Benji out for his morning walk. The wind was very cold. Almost like mid-winter. A few spot fires – mostly deliberately lit – which is concerning when we do get hot weather again.
Wednesday
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