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.

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Jaci and Nicola
Happy Birthday to you!

With love from the Monash Mob

We all hope your birthdays' yesterday were wonderful Looking forward to catching up with both of you soon.

Organising has started in 2007

We have been busy cleaning the house as part of the pledge to be more organised this year. So far the study is more under control and MLR's room has carpet, instead of a layer of clothes, followed by a layer of toys, followed by a mixed layer of clothes and toys, more like a domino's triple ripple, than a bedroom floor. The next room was the back room as it is needed at the end of the week. The photo's here show what we took out of the back room.


Mikael and his band from Newcastle, Same Old Story, are coming to stay on Friday night. They are playing at the local Tuggeranong Youth Centre. There are 4 teenage boys in the band and Mikeal is the drummer known as Micky D.

We have now washed the bathroom and swept the bedroom. Thursday night will see us putting four mattresses down, the guys are bringing their own sleeping bags.

Why we should all move to Newcastle

Yes despite all the rain reported on this blog, the water levels in the area continue to fall.

Current water levels have fallen since I last reported here.

WATER STORAGE LEVELS in CANBERRA

Goulburn

Daily consumption required 5ML.
Daily average consumption for the week ending 21 January 2007 was 5.48 ML.

Current total storage is at 20.6 %
Current total usable storage is at 17.4 %
All of which makes Canberra's water storage situation seem more manageable.

Wingecarribee Shire are on level 1 water restrictions. This is my favourite restriction.

• Fixed hoses & sprinklers can be used at night after 8pm, but must be off by 8am.
  

Nowhere could I find a dam level for Wingecarribee.

Sydney and the Blue Mountains Water
Level three water restrictions, the same as Canberra, although in Canberra you are allowed to water with a hose and drip irrigation on the odds and evens system, so that in Canberra you can water on an even day if your street number is even, between 7am-10.00am and again in the same evening from 7pm-10.00pm. In Sydney you can water with a hose and drip irrigate on Wednesday's and Sundays before 10am and after 4pm. Sydney can also still water their lawns with a hose or dripper. In Canberra you cannot hose the lawns. On the whole I think the level 3 restrictions in Sydney are more sensible than the ones in Canberra. I know that people in Canberra are watering every two days for six hours a day, because they legally can, this should be stopped.
Dam water levels are:
Thursday 18 January 35.4 %

Hunter Water which manages the water in the Newcastle area had this to report.

• Water restrictions do not apply in the Hunter at this time, and do not come into place until water storage levels reach 60%. Our water storages are 80.1% at 17 January 2007.

So this means that we should all move to Newcastle and enjoy using the water!!!!

I hear that Seattle is very wet and also has great bookshops with coffee, so maybe a move to Seattle is on the cards? Could always open a bookshop in Newcastle.

More pictures of the Rain

Guess which one of us enjoyed the rain the most!!!

Rain Rain Rain

MLR is trying push AJR into the water streaming from the pergola

I know I am obsessed by the rain, I miss it, so when it rained twice this week, I have been in heaven. On Wednesday night the rain fell like missiles, cold blobs of water, lancing down to earth, bouncing off everthing it hit. It was a true tropical storm and it lasted for about 45 minutes. JSR and I sat in the pergola and just drank in the noise (and a glass of wine/beer). The children of course thought it was good to run through. Millie the dog did not like the noise of the thunder, but she was very happy that we were out there with her. The peacherines are ready to collect

On Thursday I asked my colleagues at work about how much rain they had received and they had had none!!! Apparently only Tuggeranong!
Thursday night it came down again. This time the rain was gentler and it rained for a couple of hours. The garden sure is happier now.

2007 the year of storms and drought

Here are more photo's of the storm from New Years Eve. This is the IGA local shop at Richardson, not far from us. Now if only it would rain like that everywhere for a while. The dam level in Canberra today is at 38%.

Cheers
Mondo

More Weather

For those of you not in Canberra we had a record temperature yesterday, 40.5 degrees, highest recorded since 1968 and third highest recorded ever. If you click on the title of this page you can read the Canberra Times report of it. It is times like these that I am very pleased that we have air conditioning.

I am off to the garden to attack more weeds as it is only 29 degrees today!!

Typical Saturday?

Generally on a Saturday we have a slow approach to the day. We get up late and then meander through the day, JSR nearly always plays golf. This Saturday was following the usual agenda.

Agenda

• Gardening
• Cleaning
• Questacon
• Golf

Today I took the children to Questacon, with our new pass. We recieved this as a Christmas present, from the kid's Grandma, Barb.
This pass enables us to use reciprocal facilities such as the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, as well as similar places in Newcastle and Wollongong. We get in and can use the membership lounge, with tea, coffee and milo available - we bought our lunch at the cafe and took it to the lounge, and were able to eat in peace (we were the only ones using the lounge). The kids ran all over for an hour an a half and had a great time. Thanks for the really great present.


After we came home I decided cleaning was not interesting enough and went out to attack the jungle that is our garden on the side of the house. This is our cootamundra wattle forest. Once long ago we planted this type of wattle to provide sun protection to the dining room window- and it worked. Unfortunately wattle's have a relatively short life, and it looked rangy and scruffy, so two Christmases ago we had it chopped out. The side garden looked good. Then came the babies, and more babies (seedlings?). The cootamundra wattle has been declared a noxious weed in this area for obvious reasons. I am unable to pull them out as their root system is too strong. I am cutting them at the base and then immediately spraying the cut with strong insecticide.


There is a wheel barrow under all these weeds. I have removed two wheel barrow's of rubbish and you cannot see where I have been, but the trash pack is now almost full. JSR fixed the extra long hose, so that I can water tomorrow.


A couple of weeks ago I started this whole clean up the garden thing and I started with the roses and one of our overgrown trees at the front of the property.

Here are most of the cuttings from the tree I chopped out.


Here is what the tree looks like now.

I know it will look good in the end, I have to just keep going.

JSR had a great day at golf!!

New Year in Monash, ACT

While we were enjoying ourselves celebrating the
New Year in Wentworth Falls, Blue Mountains. Canberra was experiencing a huge hail storm. Here are some pictures of the storm water drain very close to our house. Our home was fortunately unscathed.