Thump
![[Bird on the verandah roof]](/images/2003/12bird.jpg) |
Thump, thump, thump. I had just woken up, and was staggering around the kitchen when I heard it. The unmistakable sound of feet on the roof. Thump, thump. I knew it well from the old place where I lived, where a stream of workmen would thump across the top of the building, especially in the last dying days of the tenancy as the developers moved in to unleash all-encompassing renovations.
It sounded like someone was walking across the back verandah roof. But now? Why? Who could it be? Wouldn’t they have told me if some repairs needed to be done? Hell, wouldn’t I have been the one to request it?
I took a breath and opened the back door to look out (and up).
A bird. A small bird stomping around on the flimsy corrugated plastic verandah roof, picking at a fallen cumquat from the nearby tree.
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Disturbing, smug, sorted
Yesterday’s most disturbing sight: seeing others working here (not necessarily workmates, as I don’t work with them, just near them) dressing up as Matrix characters. One woman as Carrie Anne Moss in the full black leather(ish) getup, one bloke doing a less fully-encompassing but nonetheless distinct Keanu. Disappointingly no martial arts moves, but the image of middle-managers in their 40s impersonating Trinity and Neo is not one that will leave me in a hurry.
Slightly smug this morning at reading that my high school and its sister school (which was also, perhaps confusingly, my sister’s school) trounced the private schools in VCE results this year. Not that I personally had anything to do with it – indeed my own VCE performance is best described as "good enough to get into the uni course I wanted while expending minimum effort". But it’s pleasing to see that the government schools can triumph over the piles of money poured from all directions into the private schools.
Hooray – my most worrisome Christmas presents: those for my sister and her husband, are organised. As I sat in the office last night filling time until the Blog Meetup (a small attendance – tut tut to those who didn’t make the effort for the last one of the year), I pondered what I would buy them. With only a few days left until The Day Itself, I eschewed the 400 gazillion square metres of retail outlets in the vicinity of work and instead hit Amazon UK. A few dozen clicks and �48.93 later, it was all sorted. A bunch of stuff in gift wrapping with personal (though undoubtedly not in my handwriting) greetings, which – hopefully – they’ll like and will arrive on time. Where would I be without online shopping? More organised, hopefully.
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The Space Museum
In this Doctor Who adventure from 1965, the time travellers visit Federation Square…
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Capture
Billy Joel on the capture of Saddam Hussein:
I don’t care what consequence it brings
I have been a fool for lesser things
I want you so bad
I think you ought to know that
I intend to hold you for the longest time
(Overheard this morning from the railway station kiosk man’s radio as I read the newspaper.)
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Purchase
This arvo I went down to the local electrical warehouse place and bought an evaporative cooler. So far I’ve tried it out only to the extent that I can on a day which is patently not hot. And my conclusion is… well, it blows out a heap of cold air. Which is a good thing. No matter. A more eminently suitable day will arrive in due course, I’m sure.
What puzzled me is that when bought it, I handed over my Visa card to pay the $199 for it, and the guy asked me if he could see my driver’s licence. I don’t believe I have ever been asked for a licence when paying by credit card before. Why would they do that? The authorisation is done online from the credit card company computers, so why would they want it?
I said: "Why?"
He mumbled something about it being policy.
"Since when?" I bought a bed costing about 7 times as much there last year, and it wasn’t policy then.
"For a few months now."
I handed him my licence, while pondering what a total crock it was. Not that I was concerned if he checked my signature on the two cards and my photo on the licence with my curious face peering over the desk at him. I suppose I could have stormed out and bought it somewhere else, but I didn’t have the time for such protest. I silently made a note to go elsewhere the next time I wanted to buy something electrical.
This kind of thing bugs me, because there is no mandate in Australia to carry photo ID, and I remember in the days before I got a drivers licence that the occasional idiot like this guy could make things very annoying indeed. On one occasion I was trying to pay for something by cheque, and the officious dolt at Billy Guyatts (I can slag them off, since they went bust years ago) wouldn’t accept it without showing a licence. I didn’t have one, and offered to show him my passport. He wouldn’t accept it. May I point out that I wasn’t trying to pay for an actual product I wanted to take away – I was trying to pay for an extended warranty on a video camera. I had already successfully negotiated the transaction for the camera itself. I just wanted to give them some more money so I could take away a piece of paperthat said at some stage in the future I could claim free repairs. Where the hell is the risk in that?
Why is this planet run by such fools? When I rule the world…
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She…
She has incredible eyes.
And hair. In fact, all of her is beautiful.
She has a smile that is never far away, and a fabulous sense of humour and laugh to go with it.
She laughs at all my jokes.
Except the bad ones that don’t deserve laughing at.
She is my age, give or take.
She donates her time to worthy causes.
She is incredibly intelligent and well-read and articulate without being a show-off about it.
Charisma. She has scads of charisma.
If she noticed last weekend’s major pimple-on-nose crisis, she didn’t say.
She has impeccable taste, but without the conceit that sometimes accompanies it.
Despite her good taste, it seems she likes me as much as I like her.
What’s not to like?
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Funny
Spotted on North Road the other day, a letter missing from a the big sign atop a hot chicken restaurant, making it: RED ROOTER.
Hopefully the kids didn’t know why it was so funny.
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Too damn hot
Too damn hot yesterday. And last night. I’m going to go evaporative cooler shopping.
There’s a parent at the school who looks like Billy Connolly when he was in his beardless phase, complete with the windswept and interesting long grey hair. But he has an Australian accent.
There’s another parent at the school who looks like Age humour writer Danny Katz. But that’s because he really is Danny Katz.
Kathmandu’s big sale is on again. They managed to make the prices of the down sleeping bags on page 13 of their catalogue
(at least on paper) completely illegible. Their graphic designer should be shot for thinking red on dark blue is a good idea. Luckily I don’t need a sleeping bag anyway.
TV crews always ask to film "walk pasts" after doing interviews, but never seem to use them. In their vaults must be thousands of hours of footage of people walking. Past.
A work colleague gleefully told me the other day that the housing market’s going into a downturn (thank you Ian Macfarlane) and it’s got me looking at real estate again.
The lady in the corner who continually uses the speakerphone hasn’t twigged yet that I’m not the only one it’s bugging. Especially on occasions like this morning when it’s blaring across the office, and can be heard halfway down the hallway from behind multiple partitions. She may have apologised to me, but several others were left seething.
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