StumbleUpon

If you are interested in the plethora of what is out there on the WWW - then this is the way to go.
You can select the topics you are interested in and then you can stumble through a range of pages that you may never see any other way!!

Thank you PVC for introducing me to a great method of wasting even more time on the 'net!

Enjoy
Mondo

Sad news

On returning from the Blue Mountains we learned that Aunty Bette had died last Friday, John is going to the funeral on Wednesday, we will miss her, and know that she is in a better place.

I met Aunty Bette around 16 years ago and she was a very special lady. Unlike the majority of her generation, Bette worked most of her young life, in the army and after the war she moved to Sydney and worked in David Jones. She had a flat and travelled to work each day on the ferry. It was while at David Jones that Aunty Bette met Ern Armstrong. Bette married Uncle Ern around her 40th year and proceeded to look after him in every way. Although she and Ern never had children, they spent a lot of time with JSR's family, helping out with the kids. Aunty Bette was JSR's godmother. When Barb and Al went on a cruise together, it was Aunty Bette who came and looked after the kids. It was Aunty Bette who enabled JSR to buy his first car, a landcruiser.

After her marriage Bette travelled extensively both in Australia and overseas. She travelled to Italy and Japan, among other places. Unfortunately Ern died in the 1970's, long before I met Bette. In 1991 she and her good friend Pat came and visited us here in Monash on one of their many bus trips. In 1993 Bette and Pat attended our wedding in Sydney. When looking at our wedding wish list I heard that she thought it was all too practical and went and bought us a Stewart Crystal decanter, which is beautiful. It is also a reflection of JSR's Stewart heritage.

As the quote below puts it, Aunty Bette had a full and happy life, surrounded by loving friends and family and she is now at peace from the troubles that distressed her in the past few years. We will miss her.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death. ~Leonardo da Vinci

Birthday wishes

Man of the moment
The 24th of this month found us in the Blue Mountains visiting TC & RMC in their splendid Federation style home . We were here to celebrate RMC's birthday. Most of the gang had gathered by lunchtime on Saturday.
We had a great BBQ lunch and talked our way through the afternoon and into the evening.










What to buy the thinking artist!







We had showers, interspersed with hot humid weather which cleared at all the right times to allow us to eat outside and in sunshine. It also produced an artistic cloud formation, could it be a colourful pterodactyl sweeping across the sky?

Sally knows how to spend Saturday afternoon the right way!!!

Just a little change

Yes dear readers, the template colours have changed and thank goodness for that, lime green is so yesterday!

The real reason I changed was to get the borders around the photo's. I have been dabbling with photoshop to see how to get borders around each shot and worked it out. Then I realised I have a lot of photo's to put a border around! Someone told me that you could get templates with automatic borders and hence the change, thank you TSS.

Enjoy the new look.

Mondo

National Gallery of Australia

For the second time this year I found myself at the National Gallery. The first time was having lunch with Dad, Anousha and her friend Jade in January.

Having packed up the Library in preparation for the move on Monday, we were asked to leave the office by 2pm. As this is the day that JSR comes home early, I took this as a sign that I could have some elusive "me" time, and check out the Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre. I arrived at the Gallery just a little past 2pm and could find no underground parking, so went to the open air parking and put in a plea to the parking fairy, after about five minutes of circling there was my park and I dived in.

If you check out the Egyptians link it will give you a good idea of what I saw. I enjoyed it, even if it was a little macabre - very focused on death, afterlife and the journey between the two. The display is mostly of artifacts, I wondered how much insurance they had to have to protect the material. Most of the display is from the stores and backrooms of the Louvre, and not usually seen, so we are doubly privileged. Of course there were at least two school groups going round, so I went a little quickly and then checked out the rest of the Gallery, which I have not seen for a long time. I revisited Blue Poles, one of my favourites, I remember the controversy over the cost and the fact that it was bought nine years before the NGA would even open. I went through Sydney Nolan's Kelly series (this link is to Pictures Australia rather than the NGA). I read his comments about each of his pictures. He never intended to create a series, it just evolved, I liked the idea of that - bit like writing books and suddenly realising that you have a seven part novel instead of one book. The other exhibition I checked out was Creeping through the jungle in the children's gallery, it finishes with a roar. It might keep MLR entertained for 10 minutes and AJR for a nanosecond.

Driving in Canberra

This morning I went to the Library Lovers Day Breakfast at the Waldorf on London, here the head of the Australian Library Association talked about what she liked about working in Libraries and about living in Canberra (she moved to Canberra 12 months ago). One of the things she said she liked, was the orderly way in which the traffic behaved. This made me think of the real way Canberra drivers behave!!!!!


BASIC RULES FOR DRIVING IN CANBERRA

1. Indicators will give away your next move. A real Canberra driver never uses them.

2. Under no circumstances should you leave a safe distance between you and the car in front of you, or somebody else will fill in that space, putting you in an even more dangerous situation.

3. Crossing two or more lanes in a single lane change is considered "going with the flow."

4. The faster you drive through a red light, the less chance you have of getting hit.

5. Never get in the way of an older car that needs extensive repairs. The other guy doesn't have anything to lose.

6. Braking is to be done as hard and as late as possible to ensure that your ABS kicks in, giving a nice, relaxing foot massage as the brake pedal pulsates. For those of you without ABS, it's a chance to stretch your legs.

7. Speed limits are arbitrary figures, given only as suggestions and apparently not enforceable in the metro area during rush hour.

8. Please remember that there is no such thing as a shortcut during rush-hour traffic in Canberra.

9. Always slow down and rubberneck when you see an accident or even someone changing a tyre.

10. Everybody thinks their vehicle is better than yours, especially 4WD drivers.

11. Learn to swerve abruptly. Canberra is the home of High-Speed slalom Driving thanks to the Urban services, which puts potholes in key locations to test drivers' reflexes and keep them on their toes, not forgetting the 'Test your skill' chicanes in suburbs.

12. It is traditional in Canberra to honk your horn at cars that don't move the instant the light changes.

13. Seeking eye contact with another driver revokes your right of way.

14. Never take a green light at face value. Always look right and left before proceeding.

15. Remember that the goal of every Canberra driver is to get there first, by whatever means necessary.

16. Real Canberra women drivers can put on pantyhose and apply eye makeup at 75 kph in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

17. Real Canberra men drivers can remove pantyhose and a bra at 95 kph in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

18. Heavy fog and rain are no reasons to change any of the previously listed rules. These weather conditions are God's way ensuring a natural selection process for panel beaters, junkyards, and new vehicle sales. It is an acceptable practice to increase your speed in comparison to the rate of rain fall, i.e.: the harder it rains, the faster you go.

19. There is a commonly held belief in Canberra that high-speedtailgating in heavy traffic reduces petrol consumption as you get sucked along in the slipstream of the car in front.

20. It's OK to cut off fully loaded semi-trailers, road trains and buses because, hell - they have brakes.

21. It is an essential duty of the driver to preserve the life of his passengers. Hence no matter how much of an inconvenience it may be, always find a detour around The Causeway, Lower Kambah, Lower Wanniassa, Scullin, Areas of Ainslie, and Oaks Estate.

22. Always anticipate oncoming traffic while driving down a one-way street.

23. It's OK when driving in Belconnen's suburbs to air your grievances at bad drivers by giving the "one finger salute" while screaming out "#%*#". However, it is imperative you are driving at least a 5 litre V8 with a crow bar in your lap.

24. Canberra drivers are experts at merging, when in two or more lanes travelling in the same direction, ensure that if you see someone politely indicating, waiting slowly trying to merge into your lane, show them that they must 'Wait their turn' to use your lane. Speed up, try to cut them off, should they succeed and get into your lane never mind that it was actually legal for them to do that, ensure that your flash your lights, honk your horn, use extreme hand gestures, even tailgate them, just to let them know, IT WAS YOUR LANE.

25. Ensure that when merging into traffic travelling at any more than 40kph that you stop in the merging lane, backing up traffic for miles behind you, ensuring that you have given yourself or no-one else that opportunity to merge. Again, forget that the traffic handbook states that you should speed up to meet traffic speed then merge. If you are travelling in a lane near a merge lane, don't change lanes to make it easy for them, instead see rule 24, after all they deserve it.

26. While using Canberra roundabouts, particularly two lane roundabouts, ENSURE that you are in the left lane to turn right, or the right to turn left, hell lets keep those people in those other lanes on their toes. Somone turned right from the left lane on a roundabout, in front of me yesterday!!!!!

27. If you are an Action bus driver, you must win at all costs, getting to your destination prior to any other driver is life and death. Never worry about your passengers bouncing round in the back like tennis balls, hell it's a cheap form of theme park, in fact Canberra's very own.

28. Canberra Cabs, see rule 27, except you are now qualifying for the GMC 400.

29. Pedestrian crossings - What are they?

30. If you are a cyclist, remember YOU ARE INVINCIBLE, you are stronger than ANY vehicle travelling at speed, MAKE SURE you take the whole lane for yourself, and at night NEVER use lights, remember They Will See You!

Happy driving in Canberra.
Mondo

Champion

MLR has started her school year well, she got a reading award, a good behaviour award and came second in her swimming race - first time she has ever placed in any race!!!

Well Done MLR

Neglect, gentle reader...

Yes, I have been slack and you have been neglected and no I am not going to bore you with endless stories of the weather, although it did rain on Saturday night! Water levels have gone up slightly as well.

MLR started school last Tuesday, in a 2/3 Class at Village Creek, in Kambah, with Mrs Jan McNeil as her teacher. Today, less than one week later, she is in the same class, but has a new teacher, Mr Ed Briedis. Not bad going!! Watch this space next week and maybe she will have a third teacher. Each day she attends her language support class, which concentrates on developing her speech and recall of words, as well as reading. She is here from 9am to recess, after recess she goes to Mr Briedis and does mainstream year 3 work. A couple of times a week the teachers aid from her language class comes to her mainstream class to assist with her maths. None of this she is entitled to, the headmistress is trying to ensure that MLR has a smooth transfer back to mainstream and is doing a wonderful job.

Today MLR came home with a bear from school, not really sure what we were supposed to do with it, but as it happens it is the exact same one as AJR's so we have twin bears at the moment. MLR will take some of the photo's to school tomorrow. Village Creek are having their swimming carnival tomorrow, I am sure that MLR will enjoy the water, though not the races.

Happy birthday Paul!!!
Lots of love the Monash Mob.

Smoke Gets in your ...

Smoke from the fires in the Kosciusko National Park are drifting over Canberra. It makes for interesting pictures and the washing has an interesting aroma!!!
Photo's courtesy of AJR

Did you know that it rained last night?

For those of you sick of the endless reports of rain (and drought), tune out now. It rained bucket loads last night just after the band had set off to find the venue!!!

Enjoy these photo's.

Rubbish removal continues

Still in cleaning/organising mode:

• Spent almost four hours cleaning AJR's room this week. Filled the bin, and the room is much nicer now.
• I removed more rubbish out of MLR's room, which I have not been able to fit into the bin and of course
  
• the backroom is now very clean and is set up as a dormitory for the band.

these containers have been removed from AJR's room.

Here is the rubbish out of MLR's room that will not fit in the bin

So here is how you fit five 18 year old male's into your house, you have a double bunk, a double bed and a single bed (you can just see it with the blue sheet to the right of the picture). I was expecting four, and we managed five, I am glad that the band did not grow to six as I would have had to find other places to put them.
Our kids are now planning to camp in the room over this weekend as it is the last weekend before they return to school. This room will then be used for storage and a spare bedroom.