‘Shimmer’ + “Dromedary’ = the new colour scheme in my parents’ kitchen.
Ok – now guess what this really means!!
Go on.
Clue: I was most taken aback when I saw it.
True to form my parents coincided the application of the new colour scheme with a convenient holiday when they were assured at least some of their children/labourers would be in attendance.
No roast lunch for me.
Instead a crappy paintbrush.
Hope you had a Happy Easter.

The days are getting shorter and the nights are a bit cooler and we’re clearly heading into a change of season. Consequently, I decided to go through my stockpile of hosiery (as opposed to my stockpile of weapons of mass destruction) and decide what stays and what gets knotted together into a superb tug-of-war toy for the dog.
In doing so I noticed a definite pattern in terms of wear and tear. Without fail the initial hole will appear at the tip of my left big toe. Every time. UNCANNY. This prompted me to look closely at my left big toe.
It is in no way obviously pointier than the left one.
So why the holes?
I can fathom no reason for such consistent results.
It is, indeed, another of life’s mysteries.
(Albeit pretty low down on the scale.)

Dear Ms/Mr Enyo,
Upon browsing through your catalogue I was impressed by the variety and utility of your many fine products: there were things to clean the kitchen, things to clean the bathroom, things to clean the car, things to clean the adults and things to clean the kids…
But nothing to clean the dog.
I currently possess plenty of things to clean the kitchen, the bathroom, the car, myself and any child who happens upon my home in need of a scrub. I don’t need to buy anything else.
However, the dog is a black hole of cleaning.
If you were to place such an item in your catalogue I would buy it.
Almost certainly.
A glove. A scrubber. A loofah.
Anything guaranteed to get that animal clean.
Just an idea.

Someone on the weekend reckoned I had a ‘funny’ laugh.
That’s funny as in peculiar, not funny as in HAR, HAR.
Loud, I can accept.
Maybe even raucous.
But peculiar?
Sigh.
I don’t reckon it’s so bad as to be commentable.

Was having a whinge last week about how long it was taking me to get home via the train each night.
No complaints about the morning service. I often catch the 8.45am Flinders St train and am at my desk at work for 9.00am. Splendid.
However, in the evening it was taking me over an hour to get home. How could this be? Outrageous. Much discussion of various strategies as to how I could shave some time off this extraordinaryily time consuming journey to Footscray.
But then a simpler solution occurred. How about instead of using the clock on the wall at work (which, unbeknown to me, was actually twenty minutes slow) to indicate my time of departure from work and the watch on my wrist (currently keeping perfect time) to indicate the time at which I arrive home, I just get a tall person to change the time on the clock on the wall at work so it shows the correct time?
Mystery solved.

We got our gas bill yesterday.
It’s a magic gas bill.
We don’t have to pay it.
Somewhere along the line my housemate and I must have blythely paid gas bill after gas bill without realising that each of us was putting money into the account.
Until one day we noticed that the gas bill wasn’t actually a gas bill at all.
It was a statement telling us that we were $300 or so in credit.
So now when they arrive, we don’t pay them.
We watch with interest to see how much comes off the credit amount.
I think we still have a couple of bills to go before we’ll have to start repaying any money – and start paying more attention to the process of bill paying.

Tony and Rae saw justice prevail swiftly and triumphantly at the Tenancy Tribunal today. (Actually so did Daniel and I – but only from the back row!) Fifteen minutes it took to have the issues resolved, we hope, for good. We left with the sense that the world was as it should be.
For others today, circumstances were completely different. Five months into a new contract my friend was unceremoniously sacked. No warning. No opportunity to state his case. Nothing. It was incredibly inhumane and humiliating for him. Again and again it seems certain people are subjected to grief and lost opportunities as a result of prejudice and discrimination.
My heart is certainly heavy tonight.

It is very excellent that I can read two novels over the long weekend and reasonably legitimately call it homework ’cause at the moment we’re doing ‘grammar’ in my course and where else am I to find examples of grammar, good and bad, but in my current novels (or the Saturday and Sunday Ages, for that matter?)

Speaking of grammar-type things: heard on Radio National this morning was the word “embuggerance”. (Yes, I think everyone’s reaching for the dictionary.)

It has taken twelve months or more.
But now I have links!
And a written list of ‘how to’ instructions just in case something goes awry.
Especial thanks to Justine (who knows html) and the small dog (who kept watch while it happened.)

‘Tis a funny ole thing, that English language.
I’ve been reading a grammar book today in preparation for my class on Thursday. There is so much I just don’t know about the nuts and bolts stuff. I can’t remember ever learning this sort of building blocks material at school.
Although we did do a lot of spelling bees.
And I distinctly remember a lesson about using an apostrophe to indicate a possessive.
Our main learning tool at primary school seemed to be chanting. We would chant out the spelling of words, the times tables, capital cities, dates, countries and any number of other lists.
And most of this stuff is indelibly imprinted in my memory.
Perhaps I can annoy people on the train on the way to work by chanting out what I need to learn for my course. Or perhaps not.