Here, looking very posed, is a piccy of me on my new couch, which arrived on Saturday. Super-comfortable. Feels quite high off the ground, compared to the old, saggy one (which hopefully some lucky Freecycler will want). None of the pictures taken quite captures the colour exactly, but this one is as close as any ... [More]
Since I set off the bug bombs last week, I’ve found no live cockroaches in the house, save for one that stowed away from the mailbox in a pile of junkmail. A few dead ones have been found, mostly outside the back door, perhaps trying to escape. And last night I found a dead hairy ... [More]
This is the nature strip outside my house. I leave it alone apart from organising to get it mowed every so often. All it gets is (comparatively rare) rain water. It’s lush and green. I don’t know why. This is my front lawn. It gets some greywater, and a regular mowing, but is otherwise left ... [More]
On Saturday I set off bug bombs around the house. Five of them, one in each major room. Hopefully it would spell armageddon for the cockroaches. Once set, I went for a wander for a couple of hours. Along the way I noted Zagarelli’s, the crap restaurant I once dined at, which then changed its ... [More]
Wow — a piece in the Good Weekend last week that wasn’t about Barry Humphries. It was about houses being built modelled on Martha Stewart’s homes, apparently being bought by people who have no original ideas for themselves, but trust Martha to design something good. “We’re delighted because we have no vision ourselves and Martha ... [More]
I was sitting doing some coding at work when The Posture Police arrived. The Chair Squad. The Ergonomic Inspectors. Seriously, a team of three did a sweep through the office and checked every chair to make sure it was working properly, able to be adjusted, and offering the correct back support. Zowee. It reminds me ... [More]
The cockroaches are starting to get me down. I gather they’re around the city in large numbers this summer, but that’s no consolation when I seem to find at least one somewhere in or around the house every day. Possibly the worst moment was stepping on one in the dark last week in my bare ... [More]
Mathom sounds like something out of The Meaning Of Liff, but it’s not. Apparently it’s a word from Tolkien meaning something you have no immediate use for, but which you want to keep just in case. In the stories, the Hobbits sometimes had entire extra houses dedicated to mathoms. This sounds just like my mother. ... [More]
I count myself lucky, given the power chaos yesterday. I got out of the city just before things really got pair pear-shaped (even if the train was an old non-aircon one, at least it was moving, and not too crowded, and we opened all the windows, which helped a bit). Marita was, I think, less ... [More]
The past couple of weekends, Marita and I have got on our bikes for a ride. Nothing too fast-paced. Certainly not the hell ride. Not even the slightly-less intimidating heck ride. Probably not even up to the standards of the gosh darn ride. No, we did a leisurely ride down the Nepean Highway service road ... [More]
The mouse in my house previously spurned the poison put down for it. Last week it managed to get bait out of the mouse trap without setting it off. Then it managed to nibble away at bread that was left hanging in a shopping bag from a door handle. From the trail it left behind, ... [More]
Summer rolls on, with several hot days this week leaving us sweating. On Thursday night we had an evening session of street cricket, always good when it’s warm and the sun goes down late. It’s not exactly The Ashes, and some fielding slip-ups meant one tennis ball went down a drain. Oh well. If we’d ... [More]
It’s bin night. Someone finally noticed “their” recycle bin didn’t have their street number on it, and have returned it to my driveway. It’s got some of their recycling in it, but otherwise it’s pristine. And thus my inaction (I didn’t get around to ringing the council yet to replace my stolen bin) is rewarded.
OK, what git stole my recycling bin? I’ve only had it four months, and it’s not like anybody would have taken it accidentally, not with the size of the street number I painted on it. Blargh.
At some point after the mouse in the garden incident and a notable increase in rodent activity around the house (twice I saw them scurrying around the laundry) I put down some rat/mouse poison a few weeks ago. What I found several days later was a huge, dead rat next to the side gate. ‘Orrible, ... [More]
With renovations having begun at her house, Marita has moved in for a little while. So while there were three people at my place (for part of the week), there are now four. Happily, this hasn’t quite created the havoc I half suspected with things like the capacity of the bathroom (the second toilet has ... [More]