The bits of stuff that fall in the cracks between Life, Music and outrageous fortune.
 
 
 
 
February
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Dan, Ann the Dux and Chris
The life of Riley
26.2.06 -
My sister Ann, (well, technically my half-sister), and her husband Dan (Riley) flew into town yesterday on their way to Tassie. They paused long enough to host Mary, Chris and I for brekkie at their plush Southgate hotel. Very recently, Ann won dux of Australasia in her Financial Advisor exams. If we needed it, there's proof positive she's not from our side of the family - the Rudds' expertise with money is confined to frittering it away..
 
 

1) Worth mulling over - and the compass is handy too
Signage
24.2.06 -
Or simply 'signs' as we used to call them. The first one (left) is a bit of graffiti that I encounter when I'm walking Dylan the dog, and it's down a little graffiti-intensive right of way that is used exclusively by the immediate residents, and so is unseen by most of the civilised world. If it's an original thought I'd almost pay it.
The other two banalities are well in the public gaze, and somebody should've got their money back at the very least. But, you know, I don't think anybody noticed, and if they did, they just didn't care. I wouldn't mind betting that computers were involved in their creation. How difficult is it to turn on spell check? This is exactly the sort of stuff that pillories and stocks should be dusted off for.

2) The Chocolate Box Renovations - or During 3) This is near the Victoria Market - but it's still unforgivable
 

1) A film noir moment on the Lexus stand 2) The Show's standout - Holden's rad Efijy
Car show
17.2.06 -
It's been too hot to work in the studio, so I thought I'd share a few moments with you from this year's Car Show at Jeff's Shed. Most of the exhibits were fairly conservative - the Japanese have gone for uninviting exteriors filled with the latest technology - and the highlight for me was the Holden Efijy.
 

A serious Mike and a sceptical Richard refuse to say 'cheese' for the camera
Going down #2
10.2.06 -
It started in the morning with a chat to rock scribe Ed Nimmervoll over a long macchiato at Babble. We were talking politics - a large dollop of disillusion with just a hint of revolution thrown in - when Ed suggested a second coffee. I declined on the grounds (hah!) that I'd had a coffee every day this week, and anyway I was
meeting Richard for lunch and another coffee was de rigeur there. I don't know if it's the daily coffees, but I haven't been sleeping well lately, so I thought it prudent not to recklessly escalate to three coffees
Politics dominated the conversation again. Richard and I (pic) idly chatted about creating a niche publishing house to publish the subversive rantings of disaffectd academics as our contribution to the otherwise barren political landscape, a minor objective for sure, but as with all of our other lunchtime schemes, likely never to be realised.
We ordered cheese to go with our coffees, but this proved beyond the kitchen to produce on any given day, particularly this one, so our coffees were conceded gratis, which eased the pain and suffering we had endured - in fact, it produced a kind of euphoria which wafted me all the way home. Or was it just that Richard had paid the entire bill?
Anyway, home I was, and by evening I was looking forward to the first Super 14 match of the year. I'd finished my no-thinking tuna and pasta dish over the opening stanza of the Blues v. Hurricanes stoush and had settled back to enjoy the rest of the match, when I noticed that my heart was quite insistently doing its fibrillating thing. I anticipated / hoped that it might go away in a few minutes, but it was still there and hardly diminished at the end of the match nearly two hours later, so I thought I might as well tootle on down to Box Hill Hospital and get it checked out.
I got there about 7.30, and it seems it was a quiet night at the Box Hill ER, (do they call it an ER here? - I suspect not), and was descended upon by a veritable bevy of nurses of every persuasion, plugging me in and interrogating me about my medical history. The battery of machines I was plugged into responded to my system's every nuance, and I felt like I was trapped in some hospital video game, with monitors conspicuously pinging and bleeping every second or so.
A doctor soon materialised and we chatted at length about my errant heart and the effects of caffeine on our metabolisms - it seems he had also had a brush with arrhythmia, also apparently as a result of coffee over-consumption. I had blood taken and tested and oxygen administered, but the net result was that, after three hours relaxing in Emergency pointedly reading Long Way 'Til You Drop, I was sent home with a note from the hospital to my doctor, and with a quiet word to 'moderate my coffee intake' - advice I shall happily heed. As much as I enjoy coffee, I don't necessarily love it to death..
 

You want me to sign your what, young lady?

Going down..
7.2.06 -
Pam sent me the accompanying pic - I don't believe I've seen it before, but that's no guarantee of its novelty. Trouble is, we're all a bit like laughing boy - we're all with Stupid. Unless he's older than he looks, the lad didn't vote for anybody at the last election, let alone the jumped up accountant next to whom he's standing.
By the looks of things it's a standard teen-age set-up, to which the old duffer is as oblivious as he claims to be ignorant of the dealings of the Average White Band with Sad Sack Hussein. I think Johnny will be thinking more seriously about retirement right now. When you choose to stand behind the biggest guy on the block to claim the moral high ground, that's not just egg you get on your face.

 
 
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