terrible picture of new cat

Well, the new cat in the house is a hit with everyone except Bela, who just hisses at her. She is unbelievably friendly and keen to spend time with people, and she is a very attractive personality as well as looking rather nice too. Pictures of course do not do her justice, but a kitten is hard to photograph at the best of times, which I suppose is why most of the posed ones in cutesy photos are actually stuffed.

Her name is either Asha or Asher, depending on whether it's spelt the first or second way.

My cold has taken up permanent residence in me and refuses to go. I tried to say I choose what diseases I harbour and the circumstances in which they come but apparently I have many undefended boundaries. Bummer.

the scourge

So yesterday I discovered I had lost my voice (it came back during the afternoon so luckily I was able to fend off the usual phone calls from telemarketers and the nice guy from Fox who came calling just after 5) and did not go to work. Instead I watched Reeves and Mortimer on YouTube, The Sopranos and Deadwood series 2. I am actually not as insanely madly crazy about Deadwood as many others seem to be but Swearingen's struggle with gallstones certainly put my own sufferings into context.

So yesterday a quiet day with the dogs and tv, lots of lapsan(g?) souchon(g?) and rye bread, I figured I was over it. This morning I woke about 6.30-7 with such bronchial disorder I thought 'if this gets any worse I will have to go to hospital'. That might have been dream-waking panic, of course, and in the final analysis what I really needed to do was get up, get the paper, sit in front of the heater and drink some coffee, which does have restorative properties in case of respiratory problems.

Today we are seeing a play.

the ague

I have a cold. I had to admit to this a couple of days ago after denying it entirely Saturday-Sunday-Monday. Now I admit it, I have to own it but it still sucks. This morning I awoke at 4am and I am still awake and shall be until at least 11 tonight. Very busy day, in fact the busy-ness of the week was one reason I could not believe I had a cold - usually I make time. Anyway, so far it's fairly mild I suppose and I have to admit I quite enjoy pseudoethedrine, it makes me feel like Michael Brissenden looks.

In other news, I managed to get some lapsan souchong from the tea specialist at the QV, it's mild unlike the Twinings teabags, though it smells more than the teabags. I seem to have developed a crush on lapsan souchong the week Twinings decided to stop making it any more, cuz you can't get it at any coles or safeway as far as I can see, though I did manage to buy some in woolworths near Kalamunda when I was in WA the week before last. I dunno.

genuine library phone call

- Hello library can I help you
- I have just received an email saying I have an item overdue which I returned last Friday.
- And what do you expect me to do about it?

am i paranoid?

I refrain from taking pictures of other people's children (all children are other people's to me) even though I would like to, and on the rare occasions I do take pictures of children, I refrain from posting them on this blog because I assume (1) you shouldn't do that without asking the child's parents and (2) asking the child's parents is such a weird unpleasant thing to do, opening up as it does the possibility of discussion re: the various uses unsavoury people might have for such pictures, so it's just not worth the effort.

Presumably this is why the internet is so full of cat pictures (of course, I am trying to bring the yang with all my dog pictures) and it is also why the human race will end soon.

Not that the world needs (more) pictures of children, necessarily, or cats or dogs or even quokkas.

Or octopii with soft drinks or perfect radburn suburbs for that matter. Or rear lanes in Forrest or the Dickson library. All things considered.

(NB later clarification: I don't just hang round the schoolyard taking pictures of kids etc etc I mean my nephews and nieces or children of friends etc whose company I enjoy as people and who do funny or interesting things worth taking pictures of).

recent scenes from my life a passing show of dogs, balloons and youngsters with guitars

today's listening

The Church Of Skins and Heart
Tactics Glebe
Greg Quill and Country Radio Gypsy Queen
X X-Aspirations

This afternoon we mowed the grass. Mia did the lower part of the yard and I did the upper. She raked her grass into the corner near the herb garden and I raked mine into the compost hole next to the tomatoes. There was a football game going on at the reserve.

Later I regretted not doing a before & after picture for you but just imagine there being a lot of grass and then, much of it cut down.

tonight's entertainment

Watched The night we called it a day which was much less awful than the world had led us to believe. The low-budgetness of it - by which I mean the number of massive crowd scenes that clearly only featured 20 people - just added to the impressionisticaciousness of it. Good cast. Some good lines. Good look. And the second last piece of music heard was, wow, 'Silvery moon', my second favourite Sherbet song.

We watched Neighbours and personally I am underwhelmed by Caleb and his 'I've got Stingray's heart' schtick, though I did really like when they told him that they called Scott Stingray and all he said was 'cool'. But really, Sky has just got out of jail after being accused of killing one conman, why so quick to trust again? When I was fooled by that fake clairvoyant and went to jail it took me some weeks before I was ready to go back to clairvoyants again. Or is it clairvuoyant or whatever. Maybe that's how you pick the frauds (fruads?).

Also tonight I listened to these records amongst others: Sunnyboys Individuals and Get some fun, Ian Moss Matchbook, Australian Crawl Sirocco, Sherbet Greatest Hits and though I don't need to point this out probably I will just affirm that these were side 1, side 1, side 2, side 1 and side 2 respectively.

Mia made some excellent soup tonight. I got the ingredients but she made it. Very well might I add. Now she is painting in the back room. All I can hear is the gentle sound of dabbing green (it sounds green) oils on canvas, above Matchbook (still on side two by the way).

it was foggy this morning

debrief

Well I have about 500 oblique and in-need-of-explaining photographs of recent travels to Canberra and Perth (not to mention Rotto) from not only brilliant mobile phone technology (the newest thing apparently is a 'home phone' that stays in your house with a 'land line') but also a camera. But how many dagged out photographs on the web does anyone really need to see. Suffice it to say overall, with the various stresses (how do you turn off the high beams in an alpha? How do you stop someone from putting 'oftquoted' down as a word in scrabble? No coffee pot!? Or, going way back, over-officious copyright nazis in the library?! A cranky taxi driver who thinks you're trying to rip him off by guessing the taxi fare from Tulla as $10 (it was actually 12)?) I had a blast.

happy first day of winter

It has been rainy the last few days. The last hour I was in Canberra it was fine and suddenly a gale ripped through, there were even branches on the road etc. It was all pretty good. Canberra, by the way, was fantastic but when isn't it.